 The Toastmaster speech contest is around the corner. This year, most contests will be conducted online and one of the critical components we need to get absolutely right is the timing device because going over time by even one second can result in disqualification. In this video, I am going to show you how to get it right. Let's get started. I created the speech timer specially for online contests. For now, the application is compatible only with Windows. You can download the application for free. The link to the application is in the video description below. Click on the link and you will be taken to this Google Drive where the application is available as a zip file. Click on the download button and the application will be downloaded on your PC. Once the file is downloaded, open it and you will find that the zip file contains two files and one folder. Select all the three files, right click and copy and create a folder on your PC. Let's call it Timer App and paste all the three files. I recommend creating a shortcut to the EXE file on your desktop so you can access it easily. To do that, you can right click the EXE file, send to an desktop, create shortcut. You will see now that the application is available to you as a shortcut on your desktop. If you want, you can even move it to the taskbar at the bottom of the screen so you can access it anytime. When you first run the application, you will get a warning message, click more info and click run anyway and the application is ready. The application is made up of two parts. The first part is the controller software. This is used by the person responsible for managing the time. The second part is what the participant should see and that is accessed by clicking on this hyperlink timing light. This window only shows the timing lights green, yellow, red without indicating the actual time taken by the participant. You can manually change the color of the window by clicking on the appropriate color for example green, yellow, red. This feature is very useful when you are demonstrating to the participants how the timing lights will appear. Next, let me show you how to use this application. When you are ready to start timing, click from the drop down the appropriate speech that you are timing. The application comes bundled with standard speech timings for example, a five to seven minute speech, an ice breaker speech which is four to six minutes, evaluation, two to three minutes, table topics, one to two minutes and so on. You can add additional speech types and I will show you how. Once you have selected the appropriate speech type, enter the name of the speaker and when the speaker starts speaking hit the start button and when the speaker stops speaking hit the stop button that's all there is to it. Once you hit the stop button, the system will automatically time the speaker with his name and the time that he has taken in this case seven seconds and you are now ready for the next speaker. To do that, hit the reset button, enter the name of the next speaker and when the next speaker starts speaking hit the start button and so on. When the timer is running, in case of any technical difficulties from the participants let's say they got disconnected and you want to pause the timer, there is a button at the bottom of the screen called pause, hit it and the timer will pause and it will show to the audience that the timer is no longer running. When you want to restart, hit the resume button and the timer will continue. If an entry was created which you don't want in the list, simply highlight that particular line and use this delete key to remove this entry from the list. The system will ask you are you sure you want to clear the timing data for this entry and you say yes and it will remove that entry from the list. If you want to clear the entire list, there is an option here at the bottom which says clear list, click yes and the entire list will be cleared. Let's say I want to create a new speech type which is 10 to 15 minutes and I want to show the green at 10 minutes, the yellow at 12 and a half minutes and the red at 15 minutes. I will start by giving a name to my speech type. Let me call it advanced 10 to 15 minute speech. Make a name, I can leave it blank. Please note that the time that we enter here should be converted into seconds. Since the green should be shown at 10 minutes, that's 600 seconds, I can put in 600 here. I want the yellow to be shown at 12 and a half minutes, that's 750 seconds. The red will be shown at 15 minutes, that's 900 seconds. You also have an option to define the disqualification times both for the minimum as well as the maximum. Let's say to qualify for the speech, the speaker must speak for minimum 9 minutes which is 540 seconds and he cannot speak more than 16 minutes which is 960 seconds. Once you have defined the setup, click save. You will get a message that the information has been saved successfully. Now when you look at the dropdown, you will have an advanced speech 10 to 15 minutes and you can see that the green will appear at 10, the yellow at 12 and a half and the red at 15. If you click on these three dots at the left hand side, you can also see the qualification times for the minimum as well as maximum. The final part is how to show this window, the timing light window to the participants. In my case, I use a free software called OBS Studio 26. I have a separate video on my YouTube channel that shows you how you can take any object on your PC and project it as a virtual camera. The link to that video is in the description. Follow that video and you should be able to project the timing lights onto your Zoom meetings or any other online platform. When you start your Zoom client, all you have to do is go to the camera settings and make sure that you choose OBS virtual camera and then click the start video button. The Zoom client will now show the timing window to the participants. When you start the timer, this is what the audience will see. So that was an overview of the timing application. I hope you found the resource useful and I wish you all the best in the upcoming online speech contests.