practices, trends, innovation
table of contents
Plan of The book The text is organized into six chapters, introduction and conclusion. Chapters 2 to 6 are called “sections” (“Strategic Planning,” “Pre-Conference Preparation,” “External Relations and Logistics,” “Conference,” “Post-Conference”), essentially representing the chronological and functional phases of the organizing process. Coupled with the “Canvas” elements of the Business Model Generation, they provide a way of better understanding the logic of organizing MUNs that are effective, sustainable and innovative. Chapter 7, “The Future of MUNs”, outlines some possible trends in the development of MUNs as well as some prognoses as to what MUNs might look like in the future, as seen by the MUN community at large. The conclusion reflects on the purpose of the publication and points to some open issues that may be useful for further community discussion.
table of contents
Plan of The book The text is organized into six chapters, introduction and conclusion. Chapters 2 to 6 are called “sections” (“Strategic Planning,” “Pre-Conference Preparation,” “External Relations and Logistics,” “Conference,” “Post-Conference”), essentially representing the chronological and functional phases of the organizing process. Coupled with the “Canvas” elements of the Business Model Generation, they provide a way of better understanding the logic of organizing MUNs that are effective, sustainable and innovative. Chapter 7, “The Future of MUNs”, outlines some possible trends in the development of MUNs as well as some prognoses as to what MUNs might look like in the future, as seen by the MUN community at large. The conclusion reflects on the purpose of the publication and points to some open issues that may be useful for further community discussion.
table of contents
MUNPlanet has been serving its members as an informational, social and knowledge platform – a community where its members consider how MUNs are done and how they resonate with wider global affairs. Our members answered more than 2,000 questions, provided provided more than 4,000 comments, followed over 175,000 topics and engaged in a range of discussions: from Model UN experiences and international security to sustainability and career development.
The organization of successful MUNs section on MUNPlanet has attracted the attention of over 150 MUN organizers who shared their views on how to make your MUN a success – asking 120 questions and providing 180+ answers. This testifies to the vibrancy of the MUNPlanet community and the fact that its members see the importance of leaving the legacy of their Model UN conferences to the next generation while simultaneously learning about the experiences of others, which helps them improve their own performance. This enables the innovation of the working process and improvement of organizational knowledge. It doesn’t matter whether you have organized 20 conferences or are completely new to the process - this interactive Q and A exchange benefits both those who are willing to share and those who are willing to learn.
MUNPlanet helps the conference organizers exchange information and knowledge that complements the process of proliferation and increasing the level of professionalization of MUNs. Ultimately, this may lead to improved coordination within your organizing team, enhanced engagement with MUN stakeholders and building more solid MUN par tnerships. tnerships.
RELATED LINKS Examples: Abo ut MUN MUNPla Plane ne t Organizing successful MUNs Q & A MUN Pla Plane ne t vi deo
table of contents
1. INTRODUCTION 011-014 Denition of Model UN
2. STRATEGY 036-040 MUN Strategic Planning Explained
015-017 What is a Successful Model UN?
054-059 Location and Venue 060-061 Academic Preparation and Research
4. EXTERNAL RELATIONS & LOGISTICS 076-084 MUN Promotion
018-019 Context Matters
041
020-030 Business Models for MUNs
042-043 Rationale behind Organizing MUNs
062-063 Recruiting the Chairs and Secretariat
085-095 Conference Agenda
044-045 Choosing an Organizing Entity for Your MUN
064-068 Marketing, Finances, and Partnerships
096-098 Managing the Organizing Team
046-047 Assembling the Organizing Team
069
099-103 Final Preparatory Work
048-049 Devising the Project Timeline
070-073 The “IT Infrastructure”
031-033 Best MUN Practices
Ideation Phase
3. “BEFORE THE SHOW”
Delegate Application Process
and Guest Speakers and Volunteers
table of contents
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5. THE CONFERENCE BEGINS! 6. “AFTER THE SHOW” 107-108 Welcoming and Registration of the Delegates
125-127 Post-Conference Evaluation
109-112 The Opening Ceremony
Post-Conference Communication with
113-117 Committee Sessions
MUN Stakeholders
118-119 Socials 120
The Closing Ceremony
128
129
Planning the New Organizing Team
130-131 “Back to the Future”: Where the Project Cycle Ends and Begins
7. FUTURE OF MUNs – TRENDS AND INNOVATION
133-138
8. CONCLUSION 139-146
Contributors
Authors and Section Editors; MUNPlanet Community Content
Chris Boudin
TahmidChowdhury
Daniel Gindis
Juliane Jokinen
is a fourth year International Business and
is a fourth year French and History student at
is a graduate of IDC Herzlia who has participated in
is currently the Head of International Aairs
Management student at EMLYON, who had taken
the University of Sheeld, who has partaken in a
numerous national and international Model UNs.
in UNA Estonia. She is studying for her MBA at
part in a semester abroad in Spain and a year at
year abroad at Sciences Po Paris. In total, he has
In total, he has attended over thirty conferences
the Tallinn University of Technology. She is an
Cardi Met University where he attended more than
attended over twenty MUN/ MEU simulations and it
as a delegate, Chair or member of the Secretariat.
experienced participant and organizer of MUNs,
10 conferences on the MUN-UK circuit. Every time he
is likely that he will participate in many more before
Notable conferences chaired by Daniel include
chairing the Human Rights Council at Tallinn
tries to withdraw, he signs up for a new conference
nishing. In terms of organizing experience, he was
OxiMUN, CUIMUN, WorldMUN, RomeMUN and
Model United Nations (TMUN). She was the head
– there are many conferences ahead before he will
Under-Secretary General for Chairing of SheMUN
many more. He also founded and ran trainings
organizer of TMUN 2014 and the Mini MUN
be able to retire from MUN. We had attended over
2013 as well as Secretary General of SheMUN 2014.
for various Model UN societies in Israel and other
held in Adentes School in Estonia in January
twenty MUN simulations in Europe...
He is a PR Ocer of MEU...
countries. In terms of key...
2015...
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Contributors
Auguste Levcenkaityte
Wilf Mountfield
Leo Novosel von Breithen-Thurn
Tomas Ocampo
is a student of Economics and Business at the
is the Secretary General of LIMUN 2015.
established Croatia International Model United
is a senior studying Political Science and Public Policy
University College London. She has organized MUN
He has attended over 55 conferences across the
Nations (CIMUN) in 2013, and has been Secretary-
at the University of California, Riverside in sunny
conferences in three countries and attended more
globe, as a delegate, volunteer, Chair, Secretariat
General of CIMUN from then on. He was honored
Southern California. He has a long record of success
than 20 as a delegate, Chair or member of the
member and Secretary General. Wilf has a passion
for having organized a personal meeting with the
in Model UNs and has won several Best Delegate,
Secretariat. A few notable ones include OxIMUN,
for MUNs and hopes that the work he does with
President of Croatia (2010–2015), Professor Ivo
Outstanding Position Paper, and Delegation awards.
CUIMUN, and LIMUN. She is the founder of LVMUN
the London International Model United Nations
Josipovic Ph.D regarding his CIMUN project. As a
He served as Chair of the Security Council and
(Latvian Model United Nations), and has been
this year will instill it in others as...
result of the meeting, the President provided him
General Assembly at numerous local conferences,
with assistance and support in the establishment
and was Secretary General of the Inland Empire
of CIMUN, together with other...
Conference - MUN (IECMUN)...
Secretary General for three years in a row. She has organized four other conferences...
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Contributors
María Gómez de Olea
Jop Rang
Robin Schoss
S.I.M. Shadman Sheikh
is a second year Economics and Politics student
is a sixth year graduate student at the Lorentz
is an entrepreneur and nal year law student hailing
at the University of Exeter. She is Vice President
Lyceum high school in the Dutch city of Arnhem
from Hamburg, Germany. Apart from serving as
of Exeter Model United Nations and was
who is planning on studying Biotechnology at the
HamMUN's Secretary General and President from
recently involved in the organization of Students'
Wageningen University. He has been involved in both
2012 to 2014, he also participated in various MUN
Independent Model United Nations. She has
organizing and participating in MUNs. He has joined
conferences around the world. In 2013 he founded
attended a great number of conferences both as
four international MUNs as a delegate and has been
MyMUN, the rst user-driven MUN database and
delegate and Chair, and has experience debating
an organizer of two other. In terms of organizing
its innovative Conference Management System.
in both French and English. She was the Secretary
experience, Jop has been head of services at LmunA
The platform has since been used by dozens of
General of FerMUN in 2013..
2013 and Deputy...
conferences, including Harvard...
is a law student at the University of London (International Programs) who has truly taken MUN to another level in Bangladesh. Under his leadership, through “MUNforNation” Initiative, LiGHTHOUSE IMPERIUM has successfully educated over 1,500 students nationally and internationally on MUN. Being a popular gure, he has extensive experience in all the roles ranging from Advisor to Secretary General. He is undoubtedly an invaluable MUN representative in Bangladesh. Having been trained at the UN Headquarters in New York on procedure and consensus building, with further training acquired in Japan, he is a professional MUN consultant, advisor and trainer in Bangladesh.
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Contributors
Anastasia Trubnikova
Marilena Zidianaki
DavidJanBosschaert
Samaikya Karri
Filip Karasiewicz
is graduating from the M.A. Program
is a licensed attorney and member of the
is a Law and History graduate from the
is a student of Physics at the University
is the Secretary of ICMUN Society in
in European Studies at the European
Athens Bar Association. After obtaining
Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.
of Oxford. Most recently, he served as
London as well as Logistics Ocer/
University of Flensburg. She has been
an LL.M. in International and European
He has attended and worked as a paid
Secretary General of OxiMUN 2014...
Volunteer Manager of LIMUN 2015....
to 15 MUN conferences and other
Law in Brussels and a Bachelor in Law
long-term EU trainee at the European
simulations, and is still counting. She
in Athens she held positions at the
Economic and Social Committee. Having
is the founder and has been the head
European Parliament, the Institute for
started MUNing back in 2011 through his
organizer of OstseeMUN, the world’s only
European Studies (Brussels), the Law
university conference KULMUN, David
cross-border conference, from 2013 to
Faculty of University of Bergen (Norway),
now nds himself chairing at a broad
2015. She also works...
and the Legal Council of...
variety of conferences in...
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Introduction
1.
n o i t c u d In t ro
Un d er s t an din g
t h e M UN
D ef ini t ion of Mod el UN ul Mod el UN? Wha t is a Suc c essf er s t e x t Ma t C o n t Busin ess M od el s f o r MUN s t ices B es t MUN Pr ac
d pl a yin g f iel
Introduction
Definition of Model UN Model United Nations is a proven method for practicing and teaching international relations, born in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. The first MUN conference, which simulated the work of the League of Nations, was held at Harvard in 1927. Limited to the United States for several decades, the MUNs started spreading first to Europe, in the second half of the past century, and then to other parts of the world at the beginning of the 21 st century. Today, MUNs are organized at various levels – from school-level conferences in small towns, to big international conferences that take place in the official UN buildings. Hundreds of thousands of students from all levels attend MUNs every year to practice diplomacy and learn about the United Nations system in an interesting and fun way. They make friends and establish networks of valuable contacts.
Introduction
Organizing a Model UN conference has become something of a cottage industry in the last few years. New conferences emerge every year requiring much dedication, imagination and commitment from the organizers. According to MUNPlanet research, 31 new international MUN conferences were established in 2014, and 30 in 2013. In a way, the MUN world has become more ‘democratic’ and diverse. The world of Model UN has profited from the process of globalization, but the spreading of MUNs brings new challenges as well as opportunities. While it is easier than ever to organize your own conference, there is also a big risk of producing flops. S ome MUNs are doing well and have been prospering for years, demonstrating a solid model for organizational practices mostly due to their dedicated teams and sustainable financial support. The opportunities, however, overcome the risks, and the knowledge needed to succeed in the world of MUNs is there – you just have to look for it.
That is why MUNPlanet has published this e-book, which is more than a plain guide to organizing an MUN. Various guidebooks have already been published, and they are good and extensive. However, we want to give you something different: a document written by the organizers of some of the very successful MUNs in the world, where you can see how they organize and improve their conferences from one year to the next. In this collection of voices and relevant insights, the authors outline and discuss practices and paths to innovation into the working processes that are the result of an enhanced organizational knowledge. Related Examples: About MUN:planet UNA-USA: UNA-USA “Plan a Model UN Conference”
Introduction
What is Model United Nations?
“Model United Nations, also known as Model UN or MUN, is an educational simulation and academic competition in which students learn about diplomacy, international relations and the United Nations. MUN involves and teaches research, public speaking, debating, and writing skills, in addition to critical thinking, teamwork, and leadership abilities. Usually an extracurricular activity, some schools also offer Model UN as a class.” Wikipedia “Model United Nations is an authentic simulation of the UN General Assembly, UN Security Council, or other multilateral body, which introduces students to the world of diplomacy, negotiation, and decision making.” UNA-USA Model UN simulations have become synonymous with case study approach to teaching and understanding the way the United Nations and various multilateral bodies and institutions operate. In the past ten years, the Model UN method of simulation has spread to other multilateral, historical, fictional and futuristic simulations (from the European Union councils to historical cabinets and, most recently, to Harry Potter, The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Game of Thrones ).
Examples Introduction
MUNs defined by MUNers: “Model United Nations is a simulation game aimed to teach
“Model United Nations has moved beyond an activity undertaken
“Model United Nations, also known as Model UN or MUN, is an
participants in a fun, interactive way about the United Nations,
by internationally minded individuals. In many ways, it has become
extracurricular activity designed for students who wish to place
the importance of international relations, and to allow them to
rather central to how I work. The principles it instills, those of
themselves in the shoes of diplomats, politicians, government
practice their diplomatic skills. Model United Nations is also a socially
analysis, debate and productivity, are vital. It teaches you how
ocials or journalists to discuss current issues and oer new
active event that helps young people from all around the world to
to work with a deadline, how to manage a group of people with
solutions to political, economic or social problems.
learn and understand others’ points of view in a friendly environment
dierent objectives. It teaches you to compromise. All these things
Despite its name, Model UN encompasses the world of international
and build long-lasting international cooperation and friendships.”
create a concept larger than the basic understanding of what MUN
politics: the UN, OPEC, European Union, G7/8/20, domestic relations
is. It has become an output device for individuals striving for more.
cabinets, historical events, the world of the press, etc.
It allows people to grow and develop. Ultimately, MUN is a learning
Every year, over 200,000 universities and high schools come
tool, one that has been widely distributed, molded and changed.”
together in conferences across the globe to share their passion for
Juliane Jokinen , TMUN, Tallinn.
international aairs, the art of diplomacy, and the principles of the
Wil Mountfeld, LIMUN, London
United Nations and many other international organizations.”
Lucas Amorelli Ribeiro Kornexl , WebMUN 2014
Introduction
What is a successful Model UN? In general, success is defined as “the correct or desired result of an attempt” (Merriam-Webster dictionary) or “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose” (Oxford Dictionaries).
Success in the MUN world A successful MUN is one which achieves the purpose in the field of education, socialization and organizational standards it has set for itself. For a newly established MUN, a success might be going through the organizational cycle without experiencing major difficulties and achieving a goal of pulling the conference together; the established conferences, on the other hand, want to repeat the proven organizational pattern, focusing on innovation and maintaining the high level of satisfaction among the participants and the broader community. They also want more, and set the bar higher every year. In a nutshell, your conference can succeed when it does not have to worry about survival but can set its sights on development through innovation.
Introduction
How the success of an MUN can be measured?
How MUN organizersunderstand success?
If your Model UN has full conference rooms, and delegates who talk about academic and social achievements and want to share the stories from the conference with their friends
What remains after a good conference are great stories and inspiration for further actions. Having the resources is not enough if you do not have people, and vice-versa. You must have both – and then your conference starts speaking the language of success.
back home – you are already successful. This is the success of achieving a goal and
the ultimate goal of every successful MUN are its participants. And the organizers are happy because of such developments. If the outcome is good, then you can assume that the organization was flawless. But success can always be greater, and it can be elevated to the next level by setting higher goals or aiming for a better-tuned organizational process that can help you achieve such goals.
A ne mix of high educational levels, a carefully planned social life and an impeccable organizational team that mastered even the smallest details of their job is a recipe for success.
Examples Introduction
“In general, to me, a successful MUN is one that leaves you with
“As an organizer, I can tell you that success is simple.
a memory of a very good event. If an event was not successful,
It does not matter whether you made money,
I tend to forget it very quickly or I can only remember its aws. What I have noticed from my own experience is that even a poorly organized event, or even an MUN, can be saved by people who are participating in it. If the people are nice and fun to hang around with, aws on the part of organization are more easily
whether the sponsors are happy, or whether
and have fun with others, to make it a success and a very
Juliane Jokinen , TMUN, Tallinn
wholeheartedly and blissfully what a great time they were having. I have never seen that in other simulations. A measure of success could be how well-wrapped and
their opinions and develop as people. If you have
well-delivered is the package you oer, regardless of the
achieved that, you have achieved success.”
circumstances and any unexpected events; and furthermore,
memorable
experience.”
Participants would approach us around the clock to exclaim
that you provide delegates with a learning experience. With a forum in which to voice
Wil Mountfeld, LIMUN, London
try to get every participant to get involved
after the event, accompanied by huge bright smiles on their faces.
your speakers were satised. What matters is
forgotten. As MUNs are very social events, it is of utmost importance for the organizers to
“The main and most precious indicator of success for Model EU Creta was the confessions of our participants during and
how good is your crisis-management approach, because even the best-organized event can collapse in front of your eyes if you are not
well prepared to face the worst case
scenario.” “Success to me, in a broad sense, is
meeting your goals,
which you base on your ability and potential -
Marilena Zidianaki , MEU Creta
the highest potential you can achieve (your best). For a conference, this means holding the best
RELATED LINKS
possible conference you can, which provides the best possible experience that students need.”
Tomas Ocampo, Inland Empire Conerence – Model UN
Key Questions: What makes a Model UN conference gr eat? What is the biggest f law that conferences you have at ten ded have ex hib ite d?
Introduction
Context Matters We live in an exciting time for MUNs. Over the past 20 years, the number of MUNs has multiplied. Instead of being reserved for the students in a handful of the Western countries, the MUN as a concept went global, and today most of the countries have MUNers in their territories. This is what we call proliferation of MUNs. From Harvard to Harare, students are participating in simulations of various international organizations, with an ever-increasing exchange and globalization of MUN participation. On the other hand, the conferences are showing a remarkable level of professionalism – at all levels – from local, high-school MUN events to the most notable international MUN conferences. This professionalism brings many good things to the conferences: better coordination and efficiency of the organizing teams, sharing of experiences, and improvement of organizational practices due to enhanced communication and use of shared knowledge. The conferences are getting more effective and ‘successful’, simultaneously providing a quality experience to the participants and giving back to a broader community. After all, MUNs are and will always remain a student-led activity – otherwise they would be left without their main purpose, which is education and socialization of the youth.
Small and Large Conferences Effective division of labor and reputation-building are essential for both small and large conferences
“There will always be small conferences, groups
“’Small is beautiful’– be aware that larger confer-
of students engaged with the international world,
ences are more dicult to organize and coordi-
eager to put on their rst event and striving to get
nate. An obvious truth, of course, but something
people to attend. Likewise, there will always be
worth noting. I have not been to a lot of large con-
behemoths such as LIMUN, NMUN and THIMUN.
ferences, but I have always found the larger ones
These conferences do not struggle for applicants,
to be relatively chaotic and stressful. When you
Chairs or delegates. They thrive as internationally
want or have to organize a larger conference, ef-
recognized hubs of MUN action.”
fective division of labor is the key to its success.”
Wil Mountfeld, LIMUN, London
Johannes Tropper , VIMUN
Introduction
Proliferation of MUNs Professionalization of MUNs It has been noted that the number of MUNs has multiplied dramatically in the past decade
Partial professionalization is recognized as standard; full professionalization is an “alien concept”
“Proliferation then, does not represent a
“A good compromise between
“The idea of a professional MUN is an
“Even though most MUNs are student-
negative for the community at large. Quite the
professionalism and informal/personal
alien concept to me. I don’t doubt that
based non-prot organizations, they can
opposite, the larger the community becomes, the
standards is to me the best means
such a conference will soon exist, run
also be very professionally organized if
more prevalent our educational objectives and
of organizing conduct and outlining
entirely by paid sta who make it their
the people who have been organizing
opportunities will be.
expectations. In terms of professionalism,
full time job. However, I doubt such
them for years are able to teach
Part of MUN for me has always been the
being courteous to others, respectful,
a conference will exhibit the sense
the required skills to the new team
student-led aspect. The whole concept revolves
polite, calm, collected, and exhibiting a
of community, of unique enjoyment
members.”[...] “One way of making a
around creating more insightful, developed
good level of maturity is important for
that engagement with students, other
MUN a very professional organization is
and prosperous leaders for the future. […] If
the success of any organization, not just
students, can provide.”
trying to make it protable. This would
this process however is outsourced to a larger
MUNs. Professionalism is important not
organization, you begin to lose a portion of
only because students will need it when
the unique quality that a student experience
they enter the business/professional
provides. Admittedly, as conferences get larger it
world (when they go on to pursue
stay longer as organizers. Such an MUN
becomes more dicult for students to volunteer
their careers), but also to help manage
can only exist if the level of the MUN is
increasingly large amounts of time to them.”
decisions and problems in
truly professional.”
also mean that the people organizing
Wil Mountfeld, LIMUN, London
the event would get paid for their work. This of course would motivate people to
the organization.”
Wil Mountfeld, LIMUN, London
Tomas Ocampo, Inland Empire Conerence – Model UN
Juliane Jokinen , TMUN, Tallinn
RELATED LINKS Arti cle s: Vimun at 20: johannes tr opper on art an craft of muns Key Questions: What are the 10 most important factors to consider when organizing an M UN co nfer ence? Is organizing Model UN a profi tab le b usi ness?
Introduction
Business Models forModels UN Our intention here is to show how MUNs can benefit from knowledge about organizing a business. If a successful MUN is the one which satisfies its delegates both academically and socially while leaving the organizers and the community content, one has to ask how that has been achieved, or how such a result can be achieved. While the MUN organizers shared their insights about the ways to make a conference successful, we think that some of the insights from Business Model Generation can also be useful in defining or redefining your MUN strategy. This business model can serve as an analytical matrix around which the key ingredients of the conference organization can be positioned.
Modeling the success of MUNs Business Model Generation is a handbook that aims at improving the existing business models or helping people create new ones. Guided by the key “building blocks” of successful businesses, we aim to replicate some of those ideas and apply them to the understanding of how a process of organizing a Model UN can be improved. MUN organizers can learn from business people and “generate” their own way of setting clear goals and advancing the practices of their work. After all, organizing an MUN is basically a project-oriented activity which offers its stakeholders an opportunity to advance their skills and learn while improving the conference experience. The key notions around which we organize this framework are: efficiency, professionalization, proliferation and innovation in MUNs. This does not make MUNs yet another “business”; it is, instead, an activity that goes beyond its organizers, which serves and is responsible to a broader community. Could MUNs learn from businesses and still remain true to their original concept? We believe that MUNs can learn from business practices and understand their organizational structure better. Thus the overview of a MUN organization process through key “building blocks”, presented below, which can easily be applied to the MUNs. Organizing a successful Model UN conference is the center of most questions posed within the MUN community. Guided by the key “building blocks” of successful business from the Business Model Generation handbook, we apply those to understand the process of organizing MUNs and how the process can be improved.
Introduction
MUN “Building Blocks”: Figuring Out the Organization Process of Your Conference
Key Partnerships Other MUN conferences Univcersity City assembly Embassies
Key Activities Recruiting Chairs Fundraising Finding Venue Write study guides
Key Resources People Venue Technology Budget
Revenue & Costs
Fee Advertising Training Donation
MUN Team Value Propositions Communications & External Relations Great Model UN Experience
Social media Mass media MUN:Planet University Word of mouths
Transaction fee Accomodation Food Rent
Material Website
MUN Stakeholders Participants - students Dais members Volunteers Teachers Sponsors Guests
Introduction
MUN Stakeholders
Introduction
MUN Organizing Team
Introduction
Value Propositions
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Revenue and Costs
Introduction
Key Resources
UN Library Dag Hammarskjold
Illustration based on UN Photo/UN Multimedia
Introduction
Key Activities
Introduction
Key Partnership(s)
Introduction
Best MUN Practices This e-book is a collection of good practices.
- What is the purpose of good practices? - How to use them? - How to learn from them? These are some of the questions that drive MUNers forward in thinking and learning how to improve the organizational process. It is the practices that help us set certain models in action and complete the working processes.
technology practices es ctices strategic practic decision n prac tices practi ces
Defining what a good MUN practice is and how it connect s to the strategy of making a successful MUN means combining a set of dif ferent practices that revolve around knowledge – as defined by Peter Drucker, famously known as “the man who invented management.” Drucker said that “knowledge sharing is a central aspect of the knowledge-based theory of f irm because it suggests that the primar y reason for the existence of the firm is its superior ability to transfer and integrate multiple knowledge streams and to apply existing k nowledge to tasks” (in Ryan et al. 2010, 139). Following those authors, we adopt three types of practices: technology practices, strategic pract ices and decision practices. If MUNs are to be more successful, they can improve these three practices based on knowledge. Technology is developing fast, and MUNs seem to have caught up with the new technologies; we suggest, however, that they make fur ther improvements in the areas of s trategic and decision-making practices.
Introduction D r u ck e r, s u p e rc o ol g u y
, al s o sa i d :
t h i n g s r i g h t. “ Ma na g em e n t i s d o i n g r i g h t t h i n g s ” t h e L ea d e r s h i p i s d o i n g
According to Drucker, “knowledge has become the key economic resource and the dominant– and perhaps, even the only – source of competitive advantage” (in Ryan et al. 2010, 147). Given the trend of proliferation and professionalization of MUNs, there is an ever increasing demand for a better organization process. Given the power of information technologies and increased social interaction between the conference organizers, participants and other stakeholders, the best practices are getting more available and are applied by the young as well as established conferences. This is important for at least two reasons: the young conferences are seeking knowledge and good practices in order to succeed and find their own way into the “MUN market”, while the established conferences are looking beyond “survival”, trying to maintain their level or seek new goals while pursuing innovation based on knowledge exchange. Best practices simply reflect experience, ease and sustained efforts in delivering the best possible performance and providing a rewarding experience to the MUN delegates. Those may be present in any of the sections that we will cover here – from strategic planning to the post-conference period. This e-book is a collection of practices that may help the MUN organizers learn and improve their way of work in order to make their conferences better, more efficient and built to last. And we can learn best from the MUNs that last many years. Let’s see what MUN organizers have to say about this “longevity”.
Introduction
Conference Longevity: A Few Prominent Cases “LIMUN longevity” “In terms of securing longevity, LIMUN exists as a charity with a Board of “In terms of securing longevity, LIMUN exists as a charity with a Board of Trustees whose role is to guarantee that the committee is able to function one year after another and that the Secretary General is competent and is working within the allotted time frame, and to monitor the progress of conference preparations to ensure that the schedule does not fall behind. [...] In combination, by providing an enriching experience, by having
institutional support for the conference that spans beyond the appointment of a committee, and by attempting to provide value for money, LIMUN secures its international reputation, following, and subsequently delegate attendance.”
RELATED LINKS Among the conferences with major traditions are: Harvard Model UN, NMUN, TEIMUN, WorldMUN, VIMUN, LIMUN, GIMUN, BIMUN, to name just a few. They all have their particular stories, but their success is the result of institutional support, great partnerships and dedicated organizing teams. Sometimes the lack of money and institutional support can be supplemented by the human factor and tremendous amount of creativity. factor and tremendous amount of creativity.
Key Questions How do you make sure your MUN will continue to exi st?
Introduction
How MUNPlanet Can Help Your MUN
MUNPlanet has been serving its members as an information, social, and knowledge platform - that is, as a community of practice where its members consider ways of how MUNs are done and how they resonate with wider global affairs and careers. In the first twelve months since its launch, MUNers have answered more than 2,000 questions, commented 4,000+ times, followed over 175,000 topics, and engaged in a whole range of discussions: from Model UN experiences, to international security, to sustainable development and career development. Organizing successful MUNs section on MUNPlanet has attracted the attention of over 150 MUN organizers who shared their views on how to make your MUN a success - asking 120 questions and providing 180+ answers. This is how MUNPlanet can help you make a better MUN conference: •
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We work to enable MUN conferences to create the legacy for the next generation, while simultaneously learning about the experiences of others. MUN organizing teams can improve their own performance perfor mance by learning from others. If you organized 20 conferences your knowledge and experience may be useful for other less experienced conferences. On the other hand, the exper ienced organizers may find inspiration to drive their conferences further and work on the small details and benefitting from the interaction within the biggest MUN online community. MUNPlanet helps the conference organizers exchange information and knowledge that complements the process of proliferation and rising professionalization of MUNs. Ultimately, this may lead to an improved coordination within your or ganizing team, enhanced engagement with MUN stakeholders and building more solid MUN partnerships.
Strategy
& A u t h or : it or & t ion E d t e c S e ea d e 0 l e d M ar ia Go m e z
2. StrateGy xpl a in e d g E xp c Pl a nni n g E gic P e gi r a t t r MU MUN S t e ea t i on Ph as e d Id ea g MUUN s i z i n g M ga ga n z eh in d Or e b e b eh R a t io nal MUN Yo ur MU y f y f or Yo i t n t t g En i z i n g E ga ga n z C h oo si n g a n Or ea ea m g T iz in g T ga ga n z g t h e Or bl in g t e m bl As s e el in e im el T m t T ec g t h e Pr o j ec vi si n g t D e vi
Strategy
Definition As ap pl ie d to or ga ni za ti on th eo ry in ge ne ra l, strategic planning i s an i m p o r ta tant nt as p e c t of organizing MUNs, consisting of a careful choice of direction and allocation the resources necessary the he fu lf i ll me nt o f th e go a ls s e t in for t in the strategy.
Strategy
Strategic planning is crucial in ensuring that your Model United Nations conference will be a success. There are many things that a member of the Secretariat (organizational committee) needs to take into account, ranging from the conference’s agenda to the delegates’ coffee breaks. It is important that everything follows a very strict plan, in order to avoid any surprises during the conference.
Strategy
MUN Strategic Planning Explained The next step I recommend that you take is to
MAKE A VERY CLEAR DEADLINE CALENDAR for
Strategic Planning begins within the structure of your committee. You need to make sure that everyone in the committee knows what their tasks are and what will require initiative when President or Secretary-General is not around. It is important that everyone in the committee understands its work dynamics in order to avoid overlapping of any major tasks. Thus, the first time your committee meets, you should PLAN A BRAINSTORMING session in order to identify the tasks that the committee needs to perform as a
whole and decide how you are going to distribute them amongst yourselves. You should also define your final objective which should answer the following question: what do you want your conference to accomplish?
the completion of tasks. That way everyone in the committee will know what tasks they need to complete and when they need to be completed. Once a task has been completed, highlight it but do not erase it, as you never know if you will need to go through the tasks again. Furthermore, try to periodically assess the current situation regarding your or ganization. This will help you make the required changes quickly, if so needed. You will also be much more efficient in identifying any type of problem that has arisen since the last evaluation.
If you do not do the latter often enough, you are taking the risk of allowing a small problem to become a major flaw in your organization. In other words, you are taking the risk of compromising the success of your conference, as you will have to spend a significant amount of the time – intended for another task – solving the neglected problem. You will accumulate work and your entire structure will end up on the verge of crumbling down, if it hasn’t already been ruined.
Strategy
It is important to remember that MUN conferences greatly differ one from another, and that the plan used for one conference will probably not work for another. However, one thing that does work for every conference is to start by answering the following questions – which are the summary of the above – and work your way from the answer to the last one. It will help you get a better picture of what you want your conference to be like. 1. 2. 3.
Do I have enough time? Do I have enough people who are interested? Do I have the human and material resources the project requires?
Strategy
Case study: FerMUN 2013 My MUN experience is mainly characterized by my involvement in a number of organizational teams. So far I have taken part in three, although I have been on the circuit for only three years. For this reason, I cannot provide you with a specific case study; however, I believe I can give you an example of the different challenges that I have encountered in relation to different organizations. One of the issues that I have faced in two of the three teams is the overlapping tasks of some of the positions. When I was Secretary General of FerMUN 2013, some of the people in the highest positions in the hierarchy had problems understanding the limits of their tasks and responsibilities. The fact that the team was dependent on a group of Directors – made up of high school teachers - completely undermined the authority of the Secretary General, making the organizational structure fragile and somehow inefficient. However, learning from this experience, the University FerMUN team and I made sure that this did not happen during the University version of the 2013 edition of FerMUN, by clearly specifying the responsibilities and the authority of every position in the structure. However, the most complex situation that I have been faced with occurred when I was Vice President of Exeter Model United Nations. Although this was a shared position, tasks and responsibilities were unevenly distributed. Moreover, the rest of the committee had many difficulties understanding the exact func tion of Vice President within the structure. There was never a clear specification of the position of Vice President, and there definitely wasn’t anything on how to deal with a shared position.
Another important challenge that needs to be mentioned is the challenge of organizing an MUN conference from a distance . Nowadays, MUN Secretariats usually consist of people who are regionally close to each other. However, they tend come be from ver y international backgrounds, which means that there is a very good chance that most of the committee members will be at the opposite corners of the world. For example, the University FerMUN’s committee breakdown was as follows: three members studying in Canada, three members studying in the United Kingdom, and three members studying in Switzerland. Our case was very special. Anyway, distance does not seem to be an issue; to the contrary, we were a very efficient committee. We relied heavily on a cloud to share documents, images and anything else that could be shared digitally. So far, no one has complained about the lack of information or access, which is something that I cannot say for Exeter Model United Nations. The latter committee has been unable to rely on any form of digitalized platform to share information, which has caused many organizational issues within the committee itself. Information sometimes tends to be completely inaccessible, even though we may be living no more than twenty minutes from each other. Thus, I believe that digitalizing your key documents can significantly contribute to the efficiency of your organization.
Strategy
Ideation Phase
Thinking about the organization of a MUN conference is a rather complex process. Many variables are involved and the degree of uncertainty is quite high. Nevertheless, the number of MUN organizations is rapidly growing.
The initial conditions of a MUN conference tend to be random, meaning that you won’t come across an opportunity to begin a MUN organization from ground zero many times. MUNs are usually founded by a group of people, rarely by one individual. The first things discussed by the group are the foundational issues of the organization, and they include matters such as the name, the logo, the committee structure, etc. Once you have sorted out all the main issues, you can fill in the committee positions and start working on the MUN itself. Another important concern to discuss when founding the organization is the procedures that your conference will follow and the values that will be embedded in the organization. Do not underestimate the importance of having a motto. This will allow you to advertise your conference using “tweets” and easily project the values of the organization. Moreover, when designing your logo avoid copying and pasting the logo of the United Nations, as you will be plagiarizing it. You can use the olive branches, the color, and the globe, but not the logo itself. These are just some of the basic yet important facts that you should keep in mind.
Strategy
Rationale Behind Organizing MUNs The main reason why we organize MUN conferences is this: we have loads of fun doing so, and it is a great experience. Organizers and participants are all very motivated, and dynamic, which contributes to the creation of a wonderful environment and a strong sense of community. The other reason why we organize MUNs is, in my opinion, academic.
The rationale depends on how you see the MUN conferences. You might have a dierent conception of MUN than I do, which means that you might not agree with the reasons why I believe we organize the MUN conferences. However, I believe that we all share the ideas that I am going to present in this section.
As veterans, we want to contribute to the continuity of the activity and share our knowledge on various topics we have discussed throughout the years. After all, there has always been a sense that whenever we take over a position in a MUN team, we ‘become’ the conference for a certain period of time. It is not about us, it’s about the MUN. Moreover, as
active citizens, MUNers tend to have a strong sense of civic engagement and are pushing for youth that is more informed and engaged in global issues. We organize MUNs because we believe that, by doing so, we are creating a better world. To be quite honest, we are creating a future that we think is best for us.
Strategy
LIMUN, conference as a service By Wil Mountfeld “The concept of providing a service lies at the center of LIMUN’s philosophy and my own as its organizer. If delegates believe that the conference is value for money, that they are not being overcharged, and that they are getting a truly unique experience, then they will not only return but hopefully also spread the word.”
We also provide the delegates with a highly ecofriendly conference, hopefully emphasizing the need to function sustainably. We pride our selves on using recycled materials and removing the need for large scale printing and production that so many other conferences engage in.
LIMUN offers a wide range of opportunities. The most obvious benefit is that the conference is held in London, one of the most metropolitan cities in the world. It has an incredibly rich history of international relations and continues to be a hub for finance world-wide.
Lastly, LIMUN offers delegates a truly multicultural experience, with delegates from over 50 countries across the world. We have a truly diverse membership, which makes it possible for the delegates to meet and interact with people from other cultures, societies, countries and systems they otherwise wouldn’t get to know.
We offer career talk from a UN official at the beginning of the opening ceremony. This allows delegates to experience the practical side of the United Nations and explore opportunities that they may not have otherwise learned about.
Strategy
Choosing an Organizational Entity for Your MUN
There are many possible forms of MUN organizational entities. In this section I will try to list some of the most common ones and discuss their advantages.
Strategy
The most common of MUN organizational forms is a MUN affiliated with an academic institution (e.g. university, college, high school, etc). These MUN clubs or societies tend to have access to a great number of resources such as large membership, or public, depending on the size of the academic institution itself. Moreover, they receive significant support from their institutions, usually in the form of f inancial and material support, as the activities of a MUN club usually take place on the premises of the academic institution. Another form that a MUN organization can take is that of association or foundation. This form is usually more common among the well-established MUN conferences around the world, such as THIMUN. Such foundations or associations have no problems with funding, which we all know makes a world of dif ference. Of course, any MUN can be an association, but you need to be aware that being independent from an academic institution tends to be very challenging, especially if you have just joined the MUN circuit. If you are not based in a country where sponsorship is a popular form of obtaining funding, it will be extremely difficult to get financial suppor t. On the other hand, b eing a foundation or association gives you a great deal of freedom when deciding on the shape of your MUN conference. There are many other forms of MUN organizational entities, but the ones listed above are the ones that you will most likely encounter in your MUN career. However, there is also the example of Ferney Model United Nations, known as FerMUN. FerMUN is an association recognized by the French Government that operates within the premises of a public school, Lycée International de Ferney. The Lycée extensively collaborates with FerMUN, as it has included Model United Nations in the students’ curriculum. As you can see, there are many forms of MUN organizational entities, and in my opinion the selection is up to the founders of the organization.
Strategy
Assembl ing the Organ iz ing Team Organizing your MUN team and making sure
Firstly you need to make sure that the structure of your committee is in proportion with the resources
it is ecient is essential for the success of your
I advise to opt for a pyramidal structure, with only one person leading the team. In my experience,
MUN conference. Your team represents the image of the conference and you need to ensure that they work and conduct themselves accordingly.
available and the number and level of diculty of the tasks that the committee will have to perform. having more than one person leading the group highly complicates the decision-making process. Furthermore, a good way to ensure the team eciency is to divide the positions into three topical areas: nance, logistics and administration, and content. Doing this will not only simplify the assignment of tasks but will also allow you to clearly establish the mandate of each position within your team. Make sure that the description of each committee position is crystal clear, as any loopholes can cause enormous structural problems. Remind them of the ethos they need or ought to establish – if not earlier, then during the rst meeting.
Strategy
Strategy
Devising theProject Timeline
The first thing you should do when organizing a MUN conference is making sure that you have enough time to plan everything . You need a clear timeline for your project, and it needs to be constantly updated. When setting up your project timeline you ought to take into account a couple of things that vary depending on the type of conference you are organizing. You will usually need 12 months to plan a high-school level conference, as registration and other administration processes involve more paperwork and tend to go more slowly. When organizing a universitylevel conference, you will be able to do things in proportion with the resources that are available to you. If your conference receives great support from your university/college, you will usually need a couple of months to organize everything, that is, if your MUN team works efficiently. If you don’t have the support of your university/ college, you will need more time. Moreover, do not forget that the bigger your conference is, the more time you will need.
Strategy
Project Timeline examples:
150 Participants:
people
University Conference with University/College support
Month 1
University conference without University/College support
Month 1
•
Set up conference agenda
•
Find sources of funding
•
Distri bute tasks among team members
•
Find a suitable venue
•
Set up deadline calendar
•
Distri bute tasks among team members
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Book rooms
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Set up deadline calendar
•
Make conference budget
Month 2
Month 2 •
Secure venue
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Begin with Chair applications
•
Set up conference agenda
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Begin with registration
•
Make conference budget
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Book catering
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Book venues for social events
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Find sponsorship
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Invite keynote speakers
Month 3 •
Proofread issue reports
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Last minute tasks
Month 3-4 •
Begin with Chair applications
•
Begin with registration
•
Book catering
•
Book venues for social events
•
Invite keynote speakers
Month 5 •
Proofread issue reports
•
Last minute tasks
Conclusion! Strategy
Strategic planning is something you should apply to all the dimensions of your MUN conference. However, in order to do so you need to know from the start what shape you want your conference to take, having previously assessed the resources that are available to you. Strategic planning varies considerably from one conference to the next. I do not believe that it is possible to write a step-by-step guide on how to plan a conference, as Model United Nations conferences and organizations are affected by many exogenous factors that we cannot control. Nevertheless, like any other event or conference, MUN conferences need to be carefully planned in order to leave little to chance. Strategic Planning is something that you should apply to all the dimensions of your MUN conference. However, in order to do so you need to know from the very start what shape you want your conference to take, having previously assessed the resources that are available to you. This will allow you to better structure your committees. It will also help you choose the organizational form of your MUN; after all, it is your first conference. Furthermore, with the rapid evolution of information and communication technologies and telework, MUN conferences have had to adapt. Meetings and interviews are usually conducted using Skype, and an increasing number of conferences are organized by students and individuals residing in different countries. The regional conception that MUN organizations used to have is disappearing and continental, even global, conceptions are becoming more and more popular.
RELATED LINKS Artic les Characteristics of a Good Organizing Team and It s “Players” Key Questions How to start an MUN conferen ce from ground zero? How to pick th e best conference date for your MUN?
Strategy
HowMUNPlanet Can Help Your STRATEGY
As the famous French military strategist Antoine-Henri De Jomini once remarked, strategy is about drawing the war moves on the map, while tactics is played out on the battlefield. In the same manner, this can be said of MUN strategic planning, where the vision and all the moves are known well ahead, and the organizing team is playing its tactical moves before, during, and af ter the conference. This is how MUNPlanet can help you with the strategic planning of your Model UN: • • •
Think about the purpose of you MUN, and try to visualize the conference itself. Tap into the collection of MUNPlanet discussions on various aspects of planning MUNs, and learn from the experience of other MUNers on MUN Strategic Planning. Contribute to the growth of the body of information and experience on MUN strategic planning from determining the goals to the assembling of the organizing team, and developing the calendar of activities. This way, you help future MUN organizers improve their conferences and create a legacy with the MUNPlanet community.
Before the show
3.
e r O f e B W O h S T h e
e h c r e n u V e s e a d R n d n a a t i o n a t i o n i a t r a a r a c p e t e o r S e c r L P d n c a i s r a d e m h e C h a i A c g t n i t i i p s u R e c r a r t n e r s h P d n a s, a n c e i n g , F i n t e k r a M r o c e s s p l i c a t i o n P p A e t a g l e
e y t en ka i t e vc e L t ion e di t or : Au gus t S ec
D e r u c t u r e” T h e “I T I n f r a s t
Before the show
Phases In the MUN organizing timeline, the pre-conference phase encompasses all those steps that take place between the fir st meeti ng s of the organizing team and the beginning of the conference . However, for better understanding of this enormous chunk in the organizing process, we created two separa te chapter s (III and IV) that treat “pre-conference” activities in the narrow sense of the word, an d “External Relations and Logistics” , which represents an indivisible part of the greater Pre-Conference Phase. This is in line with our understanding of the organization process as one that is divided into pre-conference, conference, and post-conference phases.
In this section, the key elements of the pre-conference phase are outlined and explained in practice. They include:
Location and venue, Academic preparation and research, Recruiting the Chairs and the Secretariat, Marketing, nances and partnerships, Delegate application process The “IT Infrastructure”
Before the show
Location & Venue By Daniel Gindis
The venues used to host Model United Nations (MUN) conferences are very important, as it is not possible to stage the event if there is no sufficient space. The logistics of any MUN conference involves finding and booking the rooms, committing to locations used for the conference’s social events, and cleaning up all the locations once the conference has ended – from this description of the logistics it is obvious that location and venue play crucial roles in the management and organization of any MUN conference.
When it comes to choosing the location and venue, the first thing that needs to be established is whether or not it is going to be necessary to pay for the space. Whether or not the space is complimentary makes an enormous difference when it comes to budgeting for the conference and things that need to be done about “room relations.” (Room relations will be defined and covered in one of the following paragraphs.) It should also be noted that this chapter makes a distinction between the committee rooms and rooms used for the opening and closing ceremonies, and the locations used for social events. The committee rooms and rooms for the opening and closing ceremonies will be discussed first, in this chapter, while the locations used for social events will be explained later on.
Before the show
Free Rooms vs. Paid Rooms Generally, if room space is allocated to an MUN conference free of charge, it means that the institution hosting the conference has donated it. Sometimes a city municipality or another organization may see value in MUN and donate the use of its facilities as venue. If none of the above mentioned cases apply, it will be necessary to rent the rooms, sometimes even from your own university or academic institution. It should be noted that the entries listed below are general guidelines, and that each venue and situation should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
will need to establish new relationships with various offices, both inside and outside the hosting venue, and should pay extra attention to the following paragraph.
When booking conference rooms, there is a difference between a conference run by a new society and that which is organizedasacontinuationofan existinglineofconferences. An entire chapter could be written on the continuing existing conferences, and an entire book on starting new societies, but for the purposes of this chapter the following statement applies: if you are continuing an existing line of conferences exactly as they have been run before, and you only want to improve the social events, skip to the section of this chapter titled ’Socials’. However, if you are starting a new conference, or have an existing conference you wish to improve, you
When a venue is complimentary, “room relations” are required. “Room relations” are the ongoing positive relationship that needs to be maintained with the person donating the space. This requires more than just being polite and timely, and requires that conference organizers go out of their way to make the conference experience extra pleasant for the donors. This becomesespeciallyrelevantwhenthe establishedrelationship will be passed on to a successor. Successful room relations require regular phone calls initiated by the conference staff, asking if the donors need anything, as well as inquiries as to how they are in general. These may seem like simple tips, but
When a venue is leased in order to be used for a committee session or the opening or closing ceremony, it is necessary to make sure that the payment is made on time and that the room is left clean at the end of each day. Make sure that someone on the conference staff is assigned to each task, and that everything that is borrowed or used is returned to its proper place.
“room relations” can take months to build and can be easily destroyed with one misstep. “Room relations” also come into play in connection with the rented rooms, but are especially relevant and important if the rooms are complimentary. Another important point to note is that academic institutions usually donate conference venues when they see value in the overall MUN program. While this is not the focus of this specific chapter, it is advisable to find someone in your local MUN circuit that has already been granted some form of institutional support and model your actions on what they did to obtain it.
TI P: M ak e sure tha t your venue is ea sily a cc essib le
b y pub lic tra nsporta tion, a nd, if it is within your a bi lit y to do so, ensure tha t the venue is c lose to where delega tes a re sta ying. Long c ommutes to the c onferenc e a nd soc ia ls a re a lwa ys a dra g, and short dista nc es a re genera ll y a pprec ia ted.
Before the show
For this reason, it is necessary to ensure that participants enjoy themselves, which involves many different and dynamic elements.
Social events are one of the many make-or-break points that will determine whether your MUN conference will be a successful one.
As stated above, venues for the conference’s social events should be easily accessible; the delegates need to be able to easily get to and from the venue, or at the very least be provided with clear instructions as to public transportation. There are two different types of social event venues and they can be sub-divided into two additional categories. It is possible to rent a venue; this can involve having to provide a party, program or entertainment to your participants. The second option involves taking the participants to a party, club or restaurant, where everything will be set up by the venue staff. These two options can be referred to as internally and externally organized events.
When arranging an internally organized event, it is possible to outsource much of the logistics by hiring a production company. In this case, the Under-Secretary General of Social Events or the Conference Logistics Manager must ensure that the company honors their commitment to the conference, in terms of providing the right quantities of food, drink and that it sets everything up on time for the event. If the conference itself needs to procure food and drinks, the conference staff is accountable for the logistics of the event. This means that whoever is in charge needs to make sure that they are on top of every step, from purchasing and setting up, to cleaning up. Internally organized events can often save the conference money, but they take up time and human resources while also causing more stress; for these reasons, it is sometimes worth outsourcing the events, even though this can end up being more expensive.
a ke su re the re is es fo r tou ch wi th the venu in ys a w al is ho e w so meon d to deal rson shoul d be on han pe his . T ts n ve e l the so cia su re tha t a t ma y o c cu r, an d en wi th an y p ro ble ms th g on s che dule. e ve r y thin g is runnin
ons ,’ m TI P: As wi th ‘ roo m rela ti
Before the show
There are two types of externally organized events. The first involves paying for a club or another type of venue, and the second is where a club or venue provides the conference participants with free admission. Please keep in mind that options for free admission, and various payment rates differ between the venues, cities and countries.
Important Note: All socia l event ven ues need to be boo ked in advance, even if they come free of charge.
CON S ID E R E D: K E Y QU E S TION TO B E is a spe cif ic lo ca tion wo r th mo re a t ra de-off, If the re nee ds to be ri ces ? o r affo r da ble d rin k p than ease of a r ri val
It is also important to note that nothing is ever truly free: the hosts that grant conference participants free admission will want something in return – usually a minimum number of participants buying drinks. They see the conference participants that have been admitted free of charge as potential customers, and it should also be noted that fifty or two hundred people coming into a venue in a single evening indeed provides good money for the venues.
f ul l y b oo k ed ! : (
Clubs or venues that do not provide conference participants with free admission will want a cover charge per participant and may even require pre-payment. In such cases, if it is deemed absolutely necessary to use a specific place, the conference staff should try to come to an agreement with the host to pay the cover charge after receiving the delegates’ conference participation fees, so as to evade unnecessary costs. In general, if a conference is large enough, it is recommended that the social event venues be those that can be “closed for the evening”, as many MUNers will not want to mix with other patrons of the venue, and vice versa.
Another point to note with regard to the venues used for social events is that less popular spaces are more likely to offer better prices on weeknights – this will likely lead to the conference getting better deals than it would on the weekends. Usually, the conference participants will form a group sufficiently large to entertain each other (especially after they have had a few drinks!), so the best club in the city might not be as good as choice as a venue that offers low priced drinks or is easily accessible by public transportation.
The main guideline for social event booking should be that the venue in question ought to be simple, user-friendly, and easy to get to and get into.
Before the show
HolylandMUN 2014: Creating a Conference in Just Three Weeks! In the summer of 2014, I was the Secretary General of a conference that, for reasons that will not be gone into in depth, was canceled three weeks before it was supposed to take place. This was a conference at which the academic staff was brought in from other universities. The general managers of the conference were students at the hosting institution, who acted as liaisons with the institution. When the institution decided that they did not want to physically host the conference, we were left with seventy or so delegates who had non-refundable plane tickets. At this point, the Secretariat was left with the question as to whether or not we should try to create a conference from nothing. We had an amazing and dedicated chairing staff, and all of the academics necessary to run a successful conference; we were only in need of committee rooms and social events venues. The cancellation of the original conference also left us with no funding with which to run the conference...
read more
Before the show
; r e ) e h m ’ I
Capacity Challenges “LIMUN’s biggest challenge has always been, and always will be, space. London is an incredible city. It welcomes enormous numbers of tourists every year and is a hub for international business. However, for an independent charity that strives to remain nancially independent to the highest degree possible, it is an unproductive environment when it comes to nding suitably priced venues… The largest problem we face is that of committee rooms. Finding 26 rooms with requirements varying from 30 to 90 can be rather tricky, especially when your aim is to have them all in the same building or complex.
RELATED LINKS: Artic les MUN ing at the UN Office in Vi enna
Universities within London prove to be the most responsive to our needs. This is also rather tting for us as a student-led organization. However, even universities can struggle to meet our requirements.”
Wil Mountfeld, LIMUN
Questions What is the difference between ‘good enough’ and ‘gr eat ’ com mi t tee rooms?
Before the show
Academic Preparation and Research By Samaikya Karri
Model United Nations, at its core, is an academic pursuit. It is a simulation of an open forum where representatives from all over the world come together to form a think-tank capable of tackling the world’s toughest challenges. As such, everything from topic selection to resolution writing should be evaluated primarily on its scholarly merit. Often conferences choose a set of topics, with individual topics that may be suitable for individual committees; however, as a whole they may be repetitive and, in some cases, show signs of strong bias. When a conference has an overall theme, different committees should focus on relevant sub-topics and clearly highlight where they differ.
Before the show
Study guides for the topics should include relevant history of the issue, mention both past and present attempts at addressing the issue, and, most importantly, be presented in an objective manner. Statements made in the study guide should be thoroughly researched, well documented and properly cited. The purp ose of the study guide should not be to direct committees toward specific goals, but to present information about the problem clearly, objectively and comprehensively to facilitate the delegates’ addressing the issue in the direction of their choosing. As long as the authors of the study guide adhere to these guidelines, it is imperative that conference organizers do not alter, bowdlerize, or censor the content therein. Likewise, delegates who submit position papers or draft resolutions should adhere to similar standards of academic integrity. It is not uncommon for delegates to fail to properly cite or, in some cases, maliciously plagiarize large portions of their submissions. While delegates should be encouraged to explore, research and re-use ideas presented by others, they should be reminded to give due credit to the original author(s). The content of these submissions should also be strictly scrutinized. The limitation of the simulations lies in the fact that delegates will never be able to see the results of the recommendations made in their resolutions. The awards policy of the conference should reflect this and reward the delegates who propose points that take into account their own foreign policy and financial feasibility, as well as their ability to compromise and negotiate with other delegates to comprehensively address the various aspects of the topic. Without rewarding such delegates, conferences often encourage a destructive and rivalrous attitude at committee sessions, which fundamentally undermines the spirit of diplomacy and cooperation that Model United Nations is ultimately trying to foster.
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RELATED LINKS Ar ti cl es MU N Re se ar ch: 3 Basi c Com po ne nt s Key Questions How important is the academi c component of the overall image of your Model UN conference
h c Mo re on th is to pi c: MU N Re se ar ch r a e s e R e e t t i m m o C
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Before the show
Recruiting the Chairs and Secretariat
in g b y da n c u l e s ?! ? t h e r
By Auguste Levcenkaityte The denition of the Dais members is rather straightforward:
It is essential to determine the style of the applicant, but it is just
generally discussed in the committees, and someone who is very
they are the people who constitute the chairing teams. For
as important to know what it is that you want. For beginner-
strict about the Rules of Procedure. One of the worst things that
most of the delegates, Chairs are the faces of the conference;
level committees, choose someone who will enforce the Rules
could happen is to have delegates challenging the decisions of the
hence it is extremely important to select the right people.
of Procedure at all times, but who will also want to help out the
Chair by ‘Point of Order’, thus disrupting the debate. Strictness,
newbies. For more advanced committees, simply choose someone
however, only works well in advanced committees – avoid persons
with extensive MUN experience and good knowledge of the topics
that are too strict in beginner-level committees.
Here you can nd what I wrote on the chairing styles on MUNPlanet:
Before the show
Once you know who these people are going to be, you should start marketing the chairing opportunities. To entice well-known MUNers to come, you will need to use a lot of word of mouth, and also offer certain benefits. For example, in LVMUN we cover plane tickets, accommodations, meals and Socials, which makes it a great deal for Chairs. I also attend conferences, so I advertise the opportunit y to the few selected people (we do not need that many Chairs anyway). Thus far this system has worked, and has proven to be efficient. Even when you already have loads of MUNers that are willing to come, your aim should be to have an open application. I would suggest that you include a form that needs to be filled out, and to follow up by conducting an interview. If you are very strict about your Rules of Procedure (RoPs), go ahead and make them take an RoP test. This strategy worked well for LIMUN, enabling it to see who would get less than 50% of RoPs even if given unlimited time. When challenged, people can be incapable of comprehending RoPs during LIMUN as well.
RELATED LINKS
in g b y da n c u l e s ?! ? t h e r
Key Questions What is the best way to selec t Chairs for your Model UN? What are the traits of a good MUN Chair? What is the role of Secretary General at yo ur M UN? What are the relevant questions to be asked during a Skype interview for Chair recruiting? Mo re on this topi c: Chairing MUN
Before the show
Marketing, Finances and Partnerships By S.I.M. Shadman Sheikh
Marketing is a crucial and integral part of any conference irrespective of its establishment period or geographical position, as arranging a successful Model UN conference requires great focus and dedication. Good marketing helps an established MUN to attract qualied delegates and ensure quality negotiation practice in the committees, while new Model UNs need marketing more than anything to establish their brand in the Model UN platform and take it around the world along with other reputed Model UNs. The rst step of MUN marketing is getting everyone to know about the Model UN. So try to make sure that your Model UN stands out enough to grab the people’s attention. The following steps can be helpful:
Before the show
> Identify Key problems
> Create the Vibe
> Set a timeframe
> Set efficient strategy
The common problems encountered by most Model UN organizers when it comes to marketing are:
Whether you are using magazine or newspaper advertisements, posters or billboards, leaflets or even a free marketing promotional strategy, the first step towards effective marketing is creating the vibe around your MUN and making it sound like an anticipated event of great importance and benefit to a wide range of people. Just make sure people know that something big is about to happen.
For effective marketing, it is extremely necessary to set a timeframe and act in accordance with the timetable. A clear timeframe will let the delegates know that it is time to wake up before the deadline actually comes, so set priority deadlines in a way that will alarm the confused. A specific timeframe also lets you know how efficiently your fellow organizers are working and where and when additional emphasis is required. You should start publicizing a Model UN at least 60 days before the conference. Remember, you need to give the delegates some space and time to make a decision. On this note,
When setting up pre-conference strategy planning, post conference evaluation is a must! Selection of venue, gathering of local support, targeting of participants and market research also need to be done prior to the conference. Influencing the local people and face-to-face communication are the prerequisites of effective marketing. An efficient team needs to be formed and their commitment ensured, as work is voluntary and therefore unpaid while still requiring enthusiasm and dedication. If necessary, make well-known MUNers your Ambassadors, because recognition matters.
the most effective tool is countdown; start a countdown
Remember that you shouldn’t form a marketing team without understanding or prior experience with Model UN.
identifying the target market for branding and carrying further communication depending on said market. Most of the Model UNs fail to ensure that marketing is done efficiently, so that most of the population, even if not joining, at least gets the vibe. Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that MUNs organized by university clubs often overshadow the Model UNs organized under the name of a college, which are thus limited mostly to students attending said college. There are Model UNs with similar abbreviated names and the delegates tend to get confused. There are also several other problems, and I’ll be highlighting all the details one by one in this article.
Make sure people know that
something
big is going on
around them.
15 days before the beginning of the conference, with each entry revealing a new reason to join.
Before the show
> Importance of partnership
> Be different
> Social media marketing
> Place emphasis on being exceptional
For good marketing there’s no better option than to form partnerships with different Model UNs, both locally and globally. Before going for a partnership, it is necessary to have a good website, as it gives your conference a better impression. Partnerships will help you build a strong MUN base and have better marketing, in terms of reliability and the quality of your conference.
If your MUN is just beginning, it needs to have a good name. It is not necessary to stamp the typical “international” or “global” seal on it; rather, try to give it a unique name, because if there is another conference carrying a similar name, this might create confusion in the common people or sponsors. A good logo will help attract MUNers from around. Use the Logo whenever such use is mandatory. If possible, your logo should also show the specialty of your particular MUN!
FFacebook, Twitter, MUN websites, Google+… create an account everywhere. A Facebook event page is more helpful for short-term marketing as interested people will feel free to ask questions, and you will need to make sure that there is a designated person to answer them no later than within three hours. Also, make an official promotional video of your conference. Your marketing team should be efficient and dedicated enough to update the official pages with necessary information at the right time. At least two cell phone numbers should be available at all times, as well as media toolkits used for outreach. The Secretariat in charge of communications and delegate affairs should be highly experienced and have a clear concept of how a MUN works or provides assistance, and should be ready to face any inquiries armed with proper knowledge.
You need to motivate people by convincing them of the exceptional nature of your conference. Publicize through local UN agencies and engage a resourceful person to share ideas. UNIC and UNA surely have their own circles. When you are affiliated with these bodies, people tend to treat your conference with greater respect. Also, if possible, provide an explanation as to why your Model UN is different and thus deserving of participation.
Before the show
> Media coverage
> Count the application responses
EElectronic and printed media coverage at the local and international level might help you publicize your Model UN better. It is necessary, especially in the case of new Model UNs, to be in touch with the news media in order to get better coverage, which will help the conference gain exposure and ensure its future reputation.
be in touch with the news media
> Case study
Most of the organizers take the delegate application responses very lightly even though they affect the marketing pace and let the organizers know about the next move they ought to be making. The target market and the conference-capacity ratio should be monitored with care. At least 15% of the targeted number of delegates MUST sign up; if not, you’re in trouble. It has become very easy to casually sign up because of the online application procedure and many potential delegates tend not to show up in the end. So here’s a graph to simplify the idea:
0
10
2 0
3 0
4 0
5 0
I have organized several Model UN conferences, and have also advised internationally, but the most challenging scenario was that if Chittagong Summit Model UN. The Model UN concept was not popular at all, to the point where only a few people were even familiar with the word. So my marketing team and I had a tough time. But eventually, having followed most of the strategies presented here, I managed to find a way out and within 15 days more than 250 students had completed their registration with payment. It was difficult, but the marketing strategy helped us pull through the first session of the conference.
6 0
7 0
8 0
t e f 6 w e e k s l
4 w e eks left
2 weeks left Last w e ek
delegates response number of days remaining
Last but not least, I would like to offer one final suggestion: if you are planning to host a conference on a larger scale, the marketing and branding strategies need to be somewhat modified, and branding should start at least 120 days before the conference in order to create a massive-scale buzz around you.
Before the show
MUN community advice: Finances and Logistics
l a s t m
f o r e
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Partnerships
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“LIMUN has generally existed without external funding for many
“The most important partnerships for our MUN have been the ones
years. The large majority of the conference structure rests on
with the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Aairs and with Erasmus+,
delegate fees. As such, LIMUN is able to operate without external
previously known as Youth in Action. Without them it would have
sponsorship, without external agreements and without external
been impossible for us to oer meals and four days in a very nice
restrictions. This allows LIMUN to remain truly independent and
hotel in Tallinn City Centre for a participation fee of only €60. We also
function as it sees t from year to year.
received a lot of support and help in nding excellent speakers for
… Logistical preparations for the conference, however, begin very
our Open Lectures, as well as for our TMUN, and have been oered
early on in the year. It is vital to look at all the options, no matter
the possibility to speak with experts from various elds.”
the specications that you want. Then nd another three with a completely dierent set of specications. Ask your committee and allow the decision to come from collective agreement. You may nd that your initial choices will prove unpopular, and it is important to tailor to conference to the needs of the masses.”
Wil Mountfeld, LIMUN, London
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Ar ti cl es Successful Model UN Mark eting is Not a Matter of Chance
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Th e Ke y to Su ccessfu l MU N Spon so rs hi p
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10 Financial Steps to Planning
how unlikely or infeasible they may appear at the time. The key is variety. If you are looking to nd a notepad supplier, nd three with
n
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Your MUN Conference
Juliane Jokinen , TMUN, Tallinn
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Mo re on th is to pi c: MU N Fund r ai si ng
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Before the show
Delegate Application Process By Robin Christopher Schoss
The Application Process covers everything from drafting the composition of your committees, defining the application deadlines and setting the fee structure, to reviewing and accepting applications. It is one of the most tedious, detail-oriented and time consuming parts of organizing an MUN conference – and it requires a strong “IT Infrastructure” (see the next chapter) more than any other part of the organization. Today, MUN delegate applications are handled either by email or online. When it comes to the recent trends, there are some online platforms that enable you to handle the applications in a coherent way. Managing many different forms and keeping track of all the incoming applications is not easy. The MyMUN conference management software stands out among the newest solutions to this demanding conferencerelated task. The delegate application process is followed by the selection process. The MUNs with a high ratio of candidates vs. available spots have a big task at hand: they must choose the best delegates and assign them countries and committees, ensuring good performance and satisfaction.
Before the show
The “IT Infrastructure” “Get the right tools” for the job By Robin Christopher Schoss
The information infrastructure of your conference is at the core of everything that you will be doing, as you will be using the Internet to communicate with your team, with the public, with your sponsors, and with your delegates on an hourly basis. The documentation you will put together for your successors will be digital as well. Hence, it is important to lay a solid foundation for these tasks by building a proper IT Infrastructure – it will determine your chances for success and prepare your conference for the future.
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Before the show
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Key Challenges
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Some of the Key Problems regarding this topic are outlined below. We will try to solve them in the Case Studies section.
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Insufficient expertise – While anyone who does MUN is nowadays considered a "digital native," and all of you are indubitably skilled in using the information infrastructure with ease, few actually know how to build and maintain an information infrastructure – it's harder than you think! Unless you study computer science, you have probably never set up a website, an e-mail server, or worked with professionals that perform these tasks.
>
Little concern is given to building an IT Infrastructure – after all, you've got your e-mail, Facebook, and Google Docs already set up. Will that be enough? No. The effort and cost required to bind all these together and put technology to full use is usually greatly underestimated, because many basic services are available fast and free of charge.
>
No place in the budget – This lack of concern in turn causes chronic underfunding of IT efforts. Conferences leave too little – and often nothing – in their budgets to purchase software licenses or to hire professionals to deal with IT, even though expensive professional services are readily engaged for other needs such as catering or entertainment. But underfunding your IT is very dangerous – re-watch “Jurassic Park” with this in mind!
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>
Bad communication
is often the – comparably harmless – consequence of not setting up proper platforms for sharing documents, assigning tasks, and enacting digital authority. In the worst case scenario there are also more serious misunderstandings, such as double assignments or loss of data.
Before the show
Case Studies It is imperative that you and your team are on the same page about all the hard facts of your conference: budget, documents, and correspondence with third parties. This is impossible if you don't pay proper attention to your IT Infrastructure at the right time (at the very beginning!), and with the right consideration in terms of manpower and budget allocation. To help you get your bearings regarding which IT strategy to follow, I will explain the basic tools you should use and then draw up three plans – ranging from complete digital independence to making the most of what you can get for free. Pick the one that is closest to the scope and budget of your MUN project and build on it!
Before the show
Basic Tools > E-mail – You may laugh at this
> Tasking and collaboration tools –
one, but it's very possible to get your e-mail wrong, starting with the provider! A Yahoo or Hotmail address will land your message in a lot of spam folders. Switch to Gmail, your university e-mail account, or your own server (see Plan 3).
Employing these will immediately put you above and beyond many conferences, even "professional" (read: well funded) organizations. It's important for the leaders of your team to have an overview of who is working on which tasks, and, more importantly, your junior team members should always know what they ought to be doing this very minute! Take a look at: basecamp.com, slack.com, "Kan Ban."
> Social Networks should not be used for any of these tasks. Facebook and Google+ are no substitute for your mail, website, team, or project management.
> Website – The website is often the first impression that prospective delegates, Chairs, and even sponsors will get of your conference (unless they find you in an MUN database that already provides a lot of information and impressions about your conference, such as MyMUN). Again, there is so much to get wrong here, you really ought to consult the computer science student in your team, or employ a professional service (see below). Some important things to consider: make sure that your site looks good on a cell phone ("responsive"), that it's optimized for search engines, and that the password to the administration panel isn't "password123". Take a look at: wordpress.com, joomla.com, squarespace.com.
> File Sharing – Lastly, employ a tool such a Dropbox or your own server to provide a central hub for files of all kinds.
RELATED LINKS Articles Robin Schoss Builds MyMUN – Advancing MUN Man age ment through Inn ovation and Tech nology MyMUN – A Sma rter Way to Organize MUN Key Questions What is the purpose of early bird appl icatio n de adl ine? How do you deal with visa frauds at M UN co nferences? How big a role does experience play in choosing Chairs an d delegates for your conference? How do you evaluate best delegates at M UN co nferences?
Before the show
HowMUNPlanet Can Help Your MUN
Having a well-developed strategy shall enable the MUN organizing team move confidently through all the phases of the preparatory process. The pre-conference phase is the nuts and bolts and represents the test of the capability of the conference organizers to implement the strategy. MUNPlanet offers you discussions and articles on the practices of organizing MUNs, and helps you tackle the issues such as booking of the conference venue, to securing sponsorships, to managing the delegate application process. This is how MUNPlanet can help you with the preparation of your Model UN: • • •
Read what some other MUN organizers have said about pre-conference preparation. Use MUNPlanet to connect with other members of the community and find a dreamteam international Secretariat for your Model UN. Take part in the discussions on this subject and contribute by sharing your experience on the ways to successfully go through the pre-conference preparation - this is the collection of best practices.
Introduction
n E 4. x ter aL relations& Logistics
i o n r o m o t P N es t Sp ea k er s M U e A g e nda and Gu c n e r e f o n C e er s ea m an d Vol un t iz in g T ana gin g t h e Or gan M
epar a t o r y W o r k F i na l Pr
e y t en ka i t e vc e L t ion e di t or : Au gus t S ec
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
e r
t s c o m e s a f c i t s i g Lo d n a n s t s er n a l R e la t io E x t , e n li e c l u d e s e l e m en m in i t d g an n i z i e) s an en g s r er s t In t h e M UN o n (i n a n ar r o w o i c h n i c a l m a t t e a t r y a n p a e m r d p s s e s e r e n c e p r o m o t io n an , ph a s e en c o m pa g p r e - c o n f e n i c t en e k er r f a n o m c e pr eo u t r e a c h , ea m c a n b e g in . T h e c en d ea li n g w i t h er or g a n i z in g t f e n h o t c f a o e s r o g f n e b e d on e b e f ir s t m e e t i h t n en t s e t h a t ha v e t o e w t e b e c p la t h e k e y e l e m e , k n a o t i t t c e a s h t s i s h e p e n c e . In t e r a l l t h o s e s t n f o c e h t f o g in n in an d t h e b e g li n e d a n d r e o u t a e s a ph e c en e r o n f o f t h e pr e - c pr a c t i c e. e x p la in e d in u d e : h e y i n c l T i o n om o t p r N U l e s s e d o c o M o n p r i t a c i l p p s h e a e r g t e s t s p e a k M a n a g i n u g d s n a e e r a g e n d a v o l u n t e c d n n e a r e m f a e o n C i n g t g a n i z o r e h t g n i M a n a g k y w o r o r t a r a p e r p F i n a l
Illustration based on Ana Trubnikova's photo.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
MUNN Promotion MU Promotion Whether you are organizing a newly established MUN conference or an old one – promotion is always crucial. It ensures that you are able to meet the budget and have a sufficient number of participants. Established and well-known MUN conferences tend to have fewer issues with promotion, while newer and less known ones have to work on it considerably more. Promotion, in terms of MUN, is the activity of advertising your conference to potential participants – Chairs, delegates and members of the press. It involves promotion on web pages, e-mail promotion, a Facebook group, as well as other media sources such as newspaper s and television. When organizing MUNs, the organizers usually overestimate the number of delegates; it then comes to the promotional activities of the Secretariat to ensure the expected number of participants.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
MUNN Promotion MU Planning Promotional activities can be divided in many different ways; however, I would always advise to do this using the easiest way – according to the deadlines. Let us say that, first, you have a deadline for the Chairs; hence, you should start the advertising activities of the Chair application process first. This will ensure your ability to concentrate the promotional efforts on the area that is the most important at the time – whether it’s the Chairs or the delegate application. Bombarding prospective participants with too much information does not work too well and the methods are too scattered and not direct enough to target the audience effectively. Once you know the deadlines of all the stages of application, clearly identify the promotional periods for all these key areas and concentrate your efforts accordingly. Allow enough time to make sure that the promotion works well and reaches the largest target audience.
or s t e s s t r pr s,, p e s gaa t e g ell e s,, d e s t h e C hair s,, s ipan t ic pa t c par r pa er s,, an d o t h e s r er m e m b e isin g t si r er t h e a d v e e t e r a t n t r en e n c on c en an d t h e y gll y diin g d c or ie s a c it e iv t t vi a c
f s f dllin e s eaa d d e e d id e on t h e e c d IP: D e T P: eaa m e
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
Target audience We tend to believe that the more promotion we have, the better it is for the conference. Usually this tends to be true – the better known the conference, the more participants you get from all over the world, the easier it will be to convince a university and other organizations or companies to sponsor it. However, However, the usual constraint of the organizers is time. While some MUNs have special Secretariat members tasked with promotion, most just ask the Secretariat members to help out with it and use all the sources that are available to them. This means that promotional duties come on top of all the rest and are, therefore, hardly ever prioritized. It is very important to understand your target your target audience – audience – that is,
who do you want as your participants? To find the right answer for each of the participants groups (Chairs, delegates, press team members), the key question is the position of the conference, that is:
Do you want to be an international, regional or domestic conference?
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
Once you answer your question, figure out the most appropriate target audiences. If you are a newly established MUN conference, with no MUN circuit in the country, go for international Chairs and domestic participants. This will ensure that the conference has the appropriate level of expertise required to train the people in the country/region of your MUN. Building a strong domestic MUN circuit is very important if you want the conference to survive in the long run. If you are an established MUN conference and want to be recognized internationally or at least regionally, consider having a large share of participants from other countries. If possible, have a few Secretariat members from well-established MUN conferences with a lot of experience. In this way your conference will gain more credibility internationally, attracting domestic and regional participants who want to have an international experience.
Domestic conference
Regional conference
International conference
Secretariat members
Domestic >> international
Domestic >> Regional >> International
Domestic >> Regional >> International
Chairs/Press team
Domestic >> regional
Domestic << Regional
Domestic << Regional << International
Participants
Domestic
Domestic << Regional
Domestic << Regional << International
Do you want to be an international , regional or domestic conference?
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
Methods Once you have strategically planned the time for all the key application processes – think of the means of promotion! In my past experience, I have used all of them; however, the more creative you are, the more likely you are to succeed, and even surprise p eople. If you already have a Facebook page with thousands of likes, promotion will be easier to do. Just make sure you come up with content that is interesting for the viewers, attracting them to press ‘Like.’ In case your Facebook base is not sufficient for the conference, prioritize and use a mix of activities presented in the table on the next page.. To attract newbies who have never done MUN before, you will need to use some unconventional methods, while contacting MUN/UN related organizations and/or clubs will prove to be the most efficient method for attracting MUNers.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
S
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University: Posters; Facebook groups; course friends; official University e-mails; University Facebook page/website; word of mouth, MUN club.
>
City: Promotion at other universities; City Council/Mayor’s office; workshops.
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Country: MUN clubs; debating clubs; radio; television; newspapers; news blogs; outreach activities; United Nations Association (UNA); governmental organizations; national Eurodesk offices (you can find a full list here).
S E N D A O R B
> Continental: Regional UNA offices; apply the same country-based promotion to different countries of the region. > International:Invitation letters/posts on the websites and Facebook groups of the biggest MUN clubs/MUN conferences in different countries; cooperation with other MUN conferences; online resources that your conference can provide (MUN training videos on YouTube, Rules of Procedure, etc.); UNA associations in all the countries; MUN-related websites such as www.munplanet.com www.bestdelegate.com http://www.unreform.org.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
“Logistics” By Wilf Mountfield
“Logistical preparations for the conference, however, begin very early on in the year. It is vital to look at all the options, no matter how unlikely or infeasible they may appear at the time. The key is variety. If you are looking to find a notepad supplier, find three with the specifications that you want. Then find another three with a completely different set of specifications. Ask your committee and allow the decision to come from collective agreement. You may find that your initial choices will prove unpopular, and it is important to tailor to conference to the needs of the masses.” “LIMUN has also begun the process of consolidating fixed logistical assets. For example, unlike other conferences, LIMUN prints its own ID cards. We purchased a specialized printer specifically for this purpose. This lets us be highly flexible as the conference approaches and allows us to modify delegations and delegate assignments on the day, if it proves necessary.
The idea of fixed and outsourced assets is not a new concept to any conference. The key, however, is finding the correct balance. Small conferences may be unable to make large purchases or have trouble finding storage space from year to year. Fixed assets should be kept to a minimum, or at least to the essentials.”
Find a good balance!
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
LIMUN is already a well established and known conference; however, you would be surprised to what extent we still depend on promotion. As we do not have a special member of the Secretariat in charge exclusively of promotion, gathering more than 1,500 delegates every year requires dedicated work from all the members of the Secretariat and our selected Chairs. LIMUN is the largest university-based MUN conference in Europe, and as such strongly positions itself in London, the United Kingdom, and Europe. We concentrate on key-based promotion. We plan promotion based on the deadlines for Secretariat members, Chairs, delegates, press team and volunteers, and choose the appropriate methods for all of them. For example, members of our Secretariat have to live in London while organizing the conference; hence we use cit y-based methods of advertisement. Usually Facebook,
RELATED LINKS
the website, and posts to groups of other London-based MUN Societies suffice. Our Facebook page has more than 6,700 likes, hence we use it as a main mean of promotion, but we also e-mail other MUN Societies and ask them to post information regarding LIMUN. All the members of the Secretariat also coordinate with their university MUN clubs to ensure that information regarding chairing, delegate and volunteering application processes gets out. Another great resource for promotion is our Chairs – while most of them voluntarily and gladly share the news that they had been selected, we also ask them to help us with the delegate application promotion. The Chairs are the people who are well known in their own MUN circuits, and they have loads of friends who also do MUN and could potentially be interested in attending LIMUN.
Key Questions Which social media channels do you use to promote your conference, and why? How do I determine the size of the team I will need to organize an In ternational MUN conference (200 participants)?
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
Conference Agenda and Guest Speakers By Tahmid Chowdhury
Agenda For all intents and purposes, the ‘Agenda’ can be described as the ‘aim’ or ‘scope’ of the conference. In the narrow sense of the word it also represents the timetable or program of activities in the conference phase (the actual duration of the conference). Ask yourselves the following questions:
What are you trying to achieve by holding the simulation? Is there a particular theme that you wish to address? How does this all apply specically to the outreach of your conference? The ‘Agenda’ comprises two core elements. First we will examine the abstract ‘Aim’ of the conference, i.e. what you are setting out to accomplish. Second, we will look at how these aims can be further developed within your conference, comprising elements such as conference theme, committees and topics.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
Aim Usually, key reasons for a conference are aims such as bringing international communities together, practicing and learning about the workings of the UN, or enabling students or young people to try playing an active role in the UN; however, it is up to you to find additional aims to make your conference more meaningful and special.
bring international communities together try playing an active role in the UN
It is vital to set out for yourself what your conference will look like, particularly in relation to delegate numbers and types/level of debate – if you are a recurring conference, this may be quite simple, as it will likely be similar to what was done the previous year, with certain changes. If you are planning a brand new conference, you will need to draw inspiration from elsewhere; start-up conferences can often base themselves off using workshopstyled MUNs in University A ssociations.
ial make your conference more meaningful and spec
Set a clear idea from the start of how many delegates you will likely get, how many committees you wish to simulate, and what level your participants will be. Even more vitally, remain realistic with these aspirations to make your conference successful. Established conferences will likely have an easier grounding on what to expect and what to aim for, though there will still be scope to improve in specific areas. New conferences will almost always have to start from grassroots level MUN, allowing it to be as accessible as possible for those who have never experienced it before. Whether new or established, it is important to know your limitations. All conferences can suffer from the same mistakes of overly expanding committees or creating overly-technical simulations for the level of participants they attract.
set a clear idea from the start be realistic understand your limits
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
Themes, Committees and Topics Once you have set out an idea of what you are planning for your conference, you can further make your aims clear through messages during the conference itself.
Theme A conference theme is somewhat of a contentious issue in MUNs. On the one hand, it allows organizers to give a conference a clear scope of what they wish to focus on, helping them with PR, marketing and external funding. On the other hand, it is often very difficult to keep a message relevant during a simulation in which every committee has a completely different topic. Newly starting conferences may find that a theme is an extra burden to an already difficult job of creating a conference, while the most established of conferences often find the exercise needless, as they are already large and have far fewer issues with PR and funding. It is usually smaller to medium conferences that will use themes in order to differentiate themselves from the competition, whilst also giving themselves a sense of uniqueness and individuality. Some examples of conference themes:
“The Challenge of Change – Exploring New Security Landscapes”
TeiMUN 2015
“Restoring Stability – Pursuing Peace, Security and Human Right s” “Cross-Border Challenges and the New World Architecture”
GiMUN 2015
EuroMUN 2015
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
Committee and Topics The selection of committee members is a vital decision , as it must correspond to what your conference is planning on achieving. Beginner delegates are usually best suited for GA committees, while those more advanced can look into simulations such as NATO, Council of the European Union and the Security Council. In terms of setting topics, the method varies from conference to conference. It is either the choice of the Secretariat to assign topics to be debated, or for the Secretariat to decide on a set of topics from among the proposals made by Chairs. The former undoubtedly allows far greater influence on what the conference will be based upon, and means that you will have greater control of the debate, but this comes with the downside of imposing topics on Chairs, who may find this demotivating. Working with Chairs on the topic proposals is far more time consuming and very difficult in the case of very large conferences, while in new conferences it is unlikely that there will
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
When it comes to themes and the setting of topics, a large, established conference such as OXIMUN does not use a topic theme as they simply do not need it; the values of the conference are already inherently evident. Large conferences such as OxIMUN and LIMUN greatly benefit from becoming recurring meeting places for the MUN community and have past figures to back them up for funding and PR rather than needing to have to set out a theme. OxIMUN had twenty different committees in 2014, meaning that the Secretariat members needed to be quite strict when setting guidelines on what the committees were to debate.
Very small conferences, such as that of MUNancy in France in its inaugural year in 2014, are very similar: the Secretariat set out the conference topics and did not set a conference theme. However, this was more due to their not having the resources to rely on Chairs with large amounts of experience rather than due to it being overly difficult to organize, as would be the case at OxIMUN. This was particularly the case because the MUN circuit in France is rather small compared to neighboring countries like the UK. However, another inaugural MUN conference in 2013, CardiffMUN, set itself out as ‘the MUN conference of Wales’ as a type of theme. Its organizers also worked collaboratively with their Chairs to pick topics rather than setting them, and this is a good example of a small to medium sized conference that worked collaboratively with its Chairs to bring expertise for the committees.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
How to Get the Guest Speaker You Want? By David Jan Bosschaert
Getting the guest speaker of your choice at the opening or closing ceremonies of your MUN is always a strenuous job. How do you start your search? How do you increase your chances of success with that one special person? Let's try to find out in this contribution.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
F o c u s !! ! Key problems
Target a specific group or profile Use all the contacts you have
We've all been there: the opening ceremony of your MUN is approaching fast, and yet there's no high-profile guest speaker in sight. Worse: your first pick couldn't make it. Even more terrifying, the person you initially booked has decided that he or she has more important business to attend to on that precious date, despite previously agreeing to be present. What can you do to prevent such things from happening? And how should you react to an unexpected cancellation?
It always helps to have a well-oriented target to focus on, also when it comes to guest speakers. Do you want professors, diplomats, United Nations personnel or someone else? What should be their area of exper tise?
t : n a t r o p ! M os t i m O T h el p N s e o d Pa ni c
This one might seem fairly obvious. And yet, many forget to target the guest speaker they want through all channels possible. If that initial e-mail to a generic address doesn't produce an answer within a week, it might be wise to look elsewhere for a suitable candidate, or to find out if you have any acquaintances in that particular sector who might know your possible invitee personally. And it doesn't hurt to make a clear division as to who in the organization team contacts whom exactly.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
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Cherchez la femme
When unsure, check with the guest speaker regularly
This might seem like the most inappropriate way to get a guest speaker. However, you would be surprised how big your MUN's network is when you take into account extended family or longstanding friendships. Maybe the father of that quiet society member will turn out to have the most relevant job ever to come and speak at your opening ceremony. Maybe your favorite teacher at school is married to a CEO or diplomat. You would be surprised to learn how many conferences have found their high-profile speakers through friends or family.
It never harms to send an e-mail about once a month asking for more specific arrangements to be made with the guest speaker. You could, for example, send an e-mail stating that such and such other person will also be attending. There is a thin line between a sustained dialogue and spam, so it's best to use this option with great caution.
Don’t panic: look for alternatives One of the most obvious things to do when a cancellation does arrive is to check whether the former guest speaker can send/recommend a new one. This makes everybody's life a lot easier, and would ideally occur. Even if no replacement speaker is offered, try to look around for profiles similar to that of your original speaker to find a suitable replacement.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
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Getting a guest speaker is never easy. We've tried our University's alumni, Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council, and failed. We nevertheless did follow through on those points previously quoted. First of all, we did target a specific group or profile, namely the famous alumni of our University. This narrowed down the search for good speakers to a more limited number. This choice was also made because it seemed more likely that former students of the institution would be more willing to give something back to the University that put them on track to greater things in life.
Once we established a set of possible candidates, we looked around for suitable contacts. My political party contacts looked interesting, since one of the secretaries of Mr. Van Rompuy was an acquaintance of mine. My political student union had already managed to get him to speak at one of our high-profile events, so it seemed worth a try to get him to attend this time as well.
We nevertheless were unable to have him attend our conference, in particular because the current events at the time were taking a turn for the worse. His agenda seemed too full to squeeze us in, and as time went by his attendance seemed less and less likely. This proved the necessity of sustained contact with your possible guest speakers, in order to foresee possible trouble on the horizon. Eventually we targeted people with a similar background as Mr. Van Rompuy, including European Law professors from our very own institution. A replacement was therefore quickly found (we got one of Mr. Van Rompuy's advisors, who also teaches at our University), and everything turned out great in the end. Despite the fact that you won’t always get that high-profile speaker you might have originally wished for, it's important to know that you can and should always ask before giving up. It's important to have a plan B as well as a strategy to get plan A to work. And, of course, you just might get that special guest speaker after all.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
Special Focus:
TMUN, an MUN that Had Ban Ki-moon Attending its Opening Ceremony By Juliane Jokinen
We were lucky enough to draw the attention of the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as far back as the early stages. For this I have to thank the local Estonian members of our team who were very well connected even before they contributed to TMUN.
It always helps to have people with connections in your group!
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
The most important step for TMUN was to become a non-profit organization as this made it easier to find par tners and sponsors than had it remained just an extracurricular student project of Tallinn University of Technology. TMUN 2012 had only one committee but we were able to organize its work n a nice hotel and it ended up being very successful. To organize a successful event, one also needs to have some luck and be in the right place at the right time. The timing of our TMUN happened to be just perfect, as Estonia was elected to the UN Human Rights Council for the period 2013–2015. After hearing that the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was pleased with our performance at TMUN, and with our Open Lectures, we were asked to become the United Nations Association Estonia, which we did.
RELATED LINKS Ar ti cl es How to Write a Formal Invitation
to a Gu es t Spea ke r Last year Ban Ki-moon planned to visit Estonia and the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked us to organize an Open Lecture where the Secretary General himself would give us the honor of being our main speaker. So we did, and it was an unforgettable experience for all of us.”
Key Questions How important are guest speakers to yo ur Mo de l UN?
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
Managing Organizing Team and Volunteers
Volunteering Volunteering is an essential part of every Model United Nations conference. It provides an opportunity for aspiring MUNers, as well as completely unrelated people, to get the feeling of a fantastic environment that every MUN is.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
The right match
A learning platform
A word that essentially describes any type of volunteering for MUN conferences (sometimes called page-ing) is dedication. It takes a great deal of effort and persistence to help organize any such conference, be it a small local one or a grand international gathering of Model United Nations enthusiasts. There may be many volunteers lining up, eager to join the team and work on the task at hand; however, it is essential to be able to distinguish the ones that possess that special quality about them that draws them to Model United Nations and would aid them in future in becoming a significant part of many great conferences.
Some may come to an assumption that being a part of an MUN event as a member of staff is overrated and most definitely oversold, and they could not be further from the truth. Speaking from my personal experience I can firmly state that any kind of volunteer work (not necessarily even an MUN-related one) stands for an amazing learning platform that can later jumpstart the volunteer on his or her path. Communication skills, ability to negotiate, quick logical thinking, working under pressure and collaborating with a unique set of people – those are the qualities that are usually associated with MUN delegates and what they can learn during the conferences, whereas in fact this exact set of skills is what makes up an invaluable staff member who either would have already acquired the above talents or developed and honed them while aboard a Model United Nations team.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
More than just a conference Although it may seem to some that all MUN-related events are a great idea for a happening and both a fun and educational tool for students, there is greater depth to it. With the exponentially growing popularity of the idea of Model United Nations worldwide, there occurs a forming of interconnected individuals that – as cliché as it may sound – meet the most important people of their lives and make life-long friendships. Having been involved with MUN for the last six years I can personally vouch for how unexpected MUN friendships can turn out to be, and by now I would be more surprised than not, not to see a familiar face from a conference going years back and taking place in a different country, at any MUN I attend. LIMUN is a fantastic example of such a pattern. People from all over the world arrive for it, from countries spanning all four corners of the globe, and yet one cannot help but feel like coming back home.
WE NEED YOU
The LIMUN way KEEP CALM AND
VOLUNTEER
As an old conference that has been around for a decade and a half, London International Model United Nations is special and one-of-a-kind in almost every way, yet most notably in how the volunteering team operates. Staff members are elevated to the highest degree of importance, on par with the Secretariat, for they are the ones who ensure a smooth flow of the conference on the invisible (or rather the most visible) side of things, providing the Chairs and the delegates with guidance, keeping their eyes open so that everything happens on schedule and according to the agenda, preparing the venues for the arrival of the participants, and much more. Every single volunteer is the reason why the conference ends up a success, although they rarely realize how important they are to the entire operation.
RELATED LINKS Key Questions How did you build a MUN organizing team? What do you do to keep MUN volunteers motivated? Do you pay your team mem be rs wage s o r j ust count on volunteers?
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
T S I L O D TO y work N ? Final prepara tor tor y work o f an MU ra epa l pr fina r o f ze he Wha t is t (phases ) the organilega tes/ ps te s e l th al f o sed is compri e arri val o f de
be fore th an MUN mus t take ening ceremon y, the o f ficial delega tions, the opUN con ference, and the closing beginning o f the Ms include checking the time tables, the lis t moda tion for ceremon y. These s tep ed delega tes ), accom
a tions (con firm r o f delega tes/deleg ipmen t necessar y fo o ther impor tan t equ and ns, s t tio a mu s leg izer /de delega tes ition, the organ N commi t tees. In add MU e l th f al o ns r. the sessio a con ference toge the de termined to pu t ha ve goals and be
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
Secretariat – “the heart” of the conference The Secretariat plays a significant role in the overall organization process. This organ is “the heart” of the conference. The Secretariat is in charge of everything: from recruiting to training the staff and registering the participants. In the final preparatory work it is important that all the members of the Secretariat have extensive experience in organizing a MUN conference. Sizeable conferences have many student participants, whose number can vary from 100 to all of 800 (delegates). I have had experience with the Croatia International Model United Nations 2014 (CIMUN) and can use it as an example. When planning international conferences, the organizers must take into account the fact that delegates will be coming from other countries as well. Finding accommodations for the delegates is one of the firs t and most important steps in the process of organizing an MUN conference. The organizers must also provide information or arrange transfers from the airport to the location of the delegates’ stay. As preparations involve regular meetings with the rest of the Secretariat team, members of the MUN Secretariat are mostly local participants or participants who have relocated to the conference city or town. It is more challenging to be a member of the Secretariat than to be a delegate, since all the members of the Secretariat are required to act as coordinators during the conference. It therefore means that they must all be well informed regarding any organizational issues concerning the conference. The holders of functions such as that of Secretary General, Chair and Co-Chair must fully under stand the functioning of the conference, especially its Rules of Procedure. The rules and procedures may vary slightly depending on the MUN, but the fundamentals reflect those of a UN conference or a meeting they are simulating.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
Duties before the conference On the day before the conference, Secretary General must convene a meeting of the Secretariat. At this meeting Deputy Secretary General and all Under-Secretaries General must submit all the information concerning their areas of responsibility. This information must include:
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
If something goes wrong… In the last phase of organizing a conference things can go wrong, but the organizers have to be ready to face the unexpected. If this happens it is important to stay calm, and if there is no way of solving the problem, the best thing to do is to improvise. Together with other Secretariat members the Secretary General, as the head of the MUN conference, can make a quick decision that will improve the work of the committees and sustain the conference. You can find more detailed information on some of the web pages of UN Associations, or those of societies of colleges or universities. One example of UN Associations is the UN Association – UK (UNA-UK)2. A good example at the university level is the University College of London MUN (UCLUMUN)3. With good ideas and a great team there are no limits, you can do whatever you set your mind to. Be confident in what you are doing, and one day you will be sharing your experiences with other conference organizers about your ways of doing an MUN.
2 3
Off icial webpage of the UN Association – UK: ht tp://www.una.org.uk/globe Off icial webpage of the University College of London Model United Nations: http://uclmun.co.uk
RELATED LINKS Key Questions: How to prepare for the unexpected?
EXTERNAL RELATIONS&LOGISTICS
HowMUNPlanet Can Help Your MUN
We hear over and over that promotion is a critical component to any successful MUN organization. You already knew that, though. If you’ ve been in the promotion activities for any amount of time, you’ve heard this statement. Is it best to do it through the social media, or through emailing campaigns, or through networking was the question, before MUNPlanet. When it comes to mastering your Model UN promotion, you should look no further than MUNPlanet. Why? Because MUNers are already here and they come from around the globe.. In just over a year, MUNPlanet managed to reach more than one million MUNers from every country on our planet. Approximately 800,000 people saw at least one of 700 MUN event pages we published in the community. What is this if not your perfect chance to get that delegate from Fiji. Beside getting people to hop onboard of your conference, MUNPlanet can help you with every other aspect of your organization, ranging from fundraising campaigns, all the way to f inding the best keynote speakers. Among other things, here is how you can do your event promotion through MUNPlanet:
• • • •
You can setup an event page for everyone to see. MUNPlanet can put you in front of everyone’s eyes by featuring your content on the homepage and throughout the community. Just for you, MUNPlanet can unlock the access to its social media channels which, one year after its foundation, count more than 50,000 delegates. MUNPlanet can provide exclusive trainings to your organizing team, helping them achieve their full potential.
The best thing about going with: you don’t have to do any of this on your own. Our team of experts, in cooperation with your communications team, will determine which tools suit your organization best and build a strategy around it. As simple as that.
e h T 5. ON F E C N E R E C ! S N I G E B t io n E d i t o r S e c & A u t h o r : C hr i s Bo u din
e s D e l e g a t e h t f o i o n a t r e g i s t n d R a g n i m o W e l c e r e m o n y g C n i n e p O h e T e e S e s sion s t o m m i t C So c ial s o ny T h e C l o si n g C e r e m
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS! This section is related to the pre-conference and logistics sections, as during the conference itself you will be applying the ideas that came to you during the pre-conference preparation and putting in place all the logistics. It will represent a test which will show whether you have forgotten any logistical side-details. Many conferences have minor logistical details that need to be tweaked durin the conference itself, and those have been covered in the previous sections.
Th is se ct io n wi ll pr ov id e gu id an ce on how to greet and welcome th e dele ga te s, in cl ud in g is su es pe rt ai ni ng to th e op en in g an d cl os in g ceremonies. It will also address most significant information th at sh ou ld be ta ken in to ac co un t re ga rd in g th e co nf er en ce (the flow of the debate), as well as the social events th at wi ll ta ke pl ac e du ri ng th e co nf er en ce .
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
Welcoming and Registration of the Delegates This is when you and the delegates will be meeting ocially and for the rst time; therefore, when welcoming them at the registration you should be very professional and diplomatic by Nemanja Bezarevic
in order to make the best rst impression possible.
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
Key Facts The following questions must be taken into account:
1. Who should do this? The Secretary General (SG) and Deputy Secretary General should be the ones welcoming the delegates, as they are the ‘faces’ of the conference Secretariat.
2. Where should you welcome the delegates/delegations? You should welcome the delegations in front of the building in which the registration is to take place, as this will let them know that they are heading towards the correct building. Either the SG or the DSG should take a delegation to the registration area.
3. What should you give them during the registration process? When the participants arrive to the registration area, you should give them their badges, country placards, pens and notepads, goodies if any, tickets for the social events if required, and a MAP with all the different venues. Don’t forget to remind each delegate about the time and venue of the opening ceremony. An issue that has been raised within the community is that sometimes there is no clear indication of where the registration is to take place. Remember that many people attending your conference are not from your city and are therefore not aware of the location of individual rooms of the venue.
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
Opening Ceremony The opening ceremony is the rst “formal” event that will be attended by all the delegates, Chairs, press ocers, and all the other participants. It is a unique occasion for the SG and the DSG to ocially present themselves, the theme of the conference, as well as the venues. TIMUN 2014
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
Key Problems Many conferences tend to have a long opening ceremony with several guest speakers. This is unfortunate as many attendees have been traveling for a long time, arriving just in time for the registration; therefore they can be a tired and lacking concentration. I would like to give you the following advice: >
Have your opening ceremony in the evening, prior to the first day of debate. This solution has one shortcoming: not all the participant (Chairs, delegates, press officers…) will attend it, as some of them will be arriving early on the first day of debate.
In this case, you have several options regarding registration: >
Have it on the day of the debate, usually one or two hours earlier,
>
Register the attendees on the day of the opening ceremony (the day prior to the debate). Make sure to also offer delegates a chance to register on the day of the debate. SheffMUN 2014 had their opening ceremony on the day prior to the day of the debates; here is the schedule of their conference:
Thursday
Friday
2pm - 5pm
Delegate registration
8am - 9am
Late registration of delegates
5pm - 6pm
Opening ceremony
9am - 10am
Committees in session
>
Keep your opening ceremony under 1 hour, or 1 hour and 30 minutes if you have a Q&A session with you guest speaker.
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
This leads to the second problem encountered by any organizer working on the opening ceremony:
who should speak, and for how long? The following elements should help you structure your opening ceremony: >
Master of the Ceremony: Deputy Secretary General (DSG) or Secretary General (SG)
Below is a list of speakers and their respective roles: >
Master of the Ceremony
>
His role is to introduce each speaker and chair the Q&A session if there is one. He will also make sure the speakers respect the time they have been given.
>
His speech is important as he is the head of the Secretariat. The speech can be personal or neutral, depending on what he will want to share with the participants. He will also declare the conference open, as per the “Opening Ceremony Schedule” template.
Deputy Secretary General Depending on the conference, she will either make a speech, or not if he is the Master of the Ceremony, in which case he will be the first to speak and thus launch the “Opening Ceremony.
Secretary General
>
Head of logistics He will only say a few words once the conference has been officially opened by the SG. In his speech he will indicate where the delegates should go for their committee sessions and inform them about possible fire drills.
>
Guest Speaker(s) It is recommended to have only one guest speaker, as this will prevent your conference from lasting too long. The gues t speaker will often be a member of an international organization. Your University or School Headmaster/Vice Chancellor can be the additional guest speaker. You should start looking for a guest speaker at the early stage of your conference planning, especially if you are hoping for a UN official. Another question you should ask yourself is this one: c an I afford to pay the guest speaker or will he have to volunteer? Also, do not forget to offer them a present or some other gesture of appreciation at the end of the opening ceremony. If your guest speaker is a UN official or an Ambassador, make sure you have a backup plan in case the diplomatic situation forces your guest speaker to pull back at the last minute. Their UN duties have priority over MUN.
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
During the opening ceremon y se veral ches, impor tan t people will be making spee y pla ers speak and it is crucial tha t all the dule their roles and respec t the sche erence pro vided to them prior to the con f n y remo to make sure tha t the opening ce does no t exceed i ts allo t ted time.
A n g, L mu by Jo p R an
Once the opening ceremony is ov er, all the delegates and Chairs w ill be mov ing into committee sessions to v ote on the agend a and start debating on the dif fe rent topics they hav e been assigned. Members of the Secret ariat w ill go to a dedicated room to prepa re, in case they need to interv ene in committees f or any reason: to make sure that any dele gate w ho requests a social pack is prov ided w ith one, and to sort out any technical dif f iculties.
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
Key Problems They represent the very essence of the conference. A committee session is the time and place to hold debates, prepare working papers, draft resolutions and vote on them. These activities can cover between 70% and 80% of the conference time. This is where MUN delegates will create many memories, where they will write incredible notes, and where – instead of people’s real names – they will learn the names of their countries.
The number of your committees needs to match the size of your conference. If you are expecting around 100 delegates, aim for no more than three to four committees. Bear in mind that some committees have a defined number of delegates, such as the Security Council (UNSC) which has 15 known members, or the Human Rights Committee. If your conference is taking place right after the five members of the UNSC have been replaced, it is recommended to use the countries that were there prior to the nomination of those five new members as this will enable the delegates to find information on what the countries have achieved while members of the UNSC. Re-group all the GA committees on the last day for a plenary GA session.
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
Committee level Some committees require more advanced delegates, while others target mainly the beginners. The following table will categorize the most common committees according to their level:
Note that the Rules of Procedure are different for SC, Crisis Committee and the ICJ. > Security Council > There are five countries with veto power > Put in place a P5-Caucus to allow P5 countries to have
a discussion in a separate room > To allow or not to allow the use of the GA Resolution 377:
Unity for Peace to bypass the veto power > Crisis Committee > It can be either in the form of SC Crisis or Single or
Joint Cabinet Crisis > Single or Joint Cabinet Crisis requires a well trained
committee director > International Court of Justice
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
Country Assignment Assigning a country is something that be taken seriously, as you do not want the delegates to become overly emotional, which is something that can happen if they are representing their own countries. Therefore, if the topic is the Cyprus crisis, avoid assigning Turkey or Cyprus to a delegate from Greece. Some countries are compulsory in a committee to guarantee a certain level of debate, i.e. if one of the topics concerns Europe it is highly recommended to have a U.S. delegation in a DISEC committee, or a German delegation in an ECOFIN simulation. Certain countries must be assigned to delegates to ensure a structured flow of debate. >
What to do if a delegate whose country plays a strong role in the topic fails to show up?
If you happen to find yourself in this situation, you should react quickly: inform the delegates that an “Ambassador of the missing country” will come into the room for a period of time to participate in the debate and answer questions. The Ambassador will be a member of the Secretariat. This Secretariat member must research the topic and the country prior to entering the committee room. As the time he will spend in the committee room will be short, his speech must be concise and to the point. >
What to do if a delegate seems uninterested or falls asleep during the debate?
If the Chair notices that a delegate is asleep or not paying attention during the debate, he must talk to the delegate to try to understand his behavior. If he feels that the provided explanation is inadequate, the Chair has the right to issue a warning to the delegate.
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
Debate As regards the debate itself, make sure that you have assigned a sufficient number of topics per committee, in order to avoid situations where committees have nothing to debate on the last day of the conference because they have already passed resolutions on all the topics they had been assigned at the beginning. The role of the Chairs here is to make sure that the committees are busy at all times. The Chairs can prolong the duration of the debate by not moving to the voting procedure – this can be a good idea, but avoid doing this for too long as the delegates might get bored discussing a resolution that is ready to be voted on. Another option is to introduce some sort of a crisis, but the Chairs will need the consent of the Secretariat to make this decision.
Reminder: The Rules of Procedure generally only allow
one resolution per committee, but this can be modified, allowing the delegates to spend more time debating. To have a structured and intelligent debate, the delegates should be given a study guide. There are however some disagreements as to who should write the guide. Some people say that it is the role of the Chair, while others believe that the Secretariat should be the one to do it (SG and DSG). A discussion on this topic is available here.
To provide the debate with a better structure you can advise the Chair to use chairing software. Many are available, mostly free of charge. You can read the opinions of members of the community here. To guarantee a certain level of comfort to the delegates during the debates, make sure that the following logistical aspects are honored: have water available at all times, as well as Internet access and power sockets if computers will be required during the debates.
Make sure the delegates have the guide one to two weeks prior to the conference so that they have time to get well acquainted with the topic.
by Jop Rang, LmunA
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
A View from the MUN Community: Innovation in session RELATED LINKS
“The interconnectivity is the MUN operating system in which all the committees and countries are mutually connected. What happens in one committee may aect
Ar ti cl es
the discussions and the focus of others. In addition, all the
Model UN Flow of Debate
delegates representing the same country at the conference are in constant contact through our social media platform
Key Questions Which MUN committees are most diffi cult to prepare for?
and our interconnectivity sessions, which allows the delegates to personally meet the representatives of ‘their’ countries, as well as allies, in order to better elaborate their strategy during the conference. The interconnectivity MUN operating system represents
Mo re on th is to pi c: Committee Management
a part of WebMUN’s goal to be as realistic as possible and to revolutionize the Model United Nations conference.”
Lucas Ribeiro Amorelli Kornexl , WebMUN 2014
c ou rte sy of A n a Tr ubn ik o v a /O s t se eM UN
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
impor tan t a r con ference pla y as organized during you ties vi ti ac ial o t unders tand soc o n e es d Th ome con ferenc y, s tel a tun for Un lf. tse ts can be role as the deba te i uld. Your social e ven spec t the wa y the y sho ial a soc e e, the f th enc o fer role con the aspec t o f your re original the social mo he oun t t. T acc en to fer in f e di y tak ver u also need to e will be. Ho we ver, yo enc fer ven ts. f e con o r s you ype n t ter t be igh t age for cer tai migh t no t be o f the r tes ega ed del ne e you som t tha in the Un ited S ta tes ference is organized o f 21 For ins tance, if a con will be under the age tes me o f the delega t so a d th min in r to bea s. t be allo wed in to club and will there fore no
by Jop Rang, LmunA
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
> One-day conference
Key Problems When organizing social event you need to be mindful of several elements:
> What do you want to organize? This depends of the length of your conference
The delegates might not be able to attend any social events as their return tickets might be for the same day.
> Two-day conference You can organize one event the first evening, either a diner or an evening in a club. This will give the delegates on opportunity to get to know each other in a setting less formal than that of a debate, giving them a chance to learn the names of the delegates instead of only hearing the names of their countries.
> Three-day conference You have a chance to organize two social events. Most conferences will organize a dinner/ reception on the first day, grouping the delegates by committee. Thus type of division offers delegates the opportunity to get to know the people they will be working with for the next two days. The dinner can have a theme, or it may be a black tie event; the decision is up to the Secretariat. However, bear in mind the need to strictly adhere to the conference agenda. The second event will be less formal (i.e. a nightclub).
> The Venue > Make sure the venue matches the image you want for your conference. > The venue’s capacity must be suf ficient to welcome all the delegates attending your social events. > Make sure the venue matches your budget.
If you want to know more about which social events to organize, take a look at this topic on MUN:Planet community.
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
Key Remarks Just like they do with a GREAT essay, some people will judge your conference just by its opening and closing ceremonies. Here are some hints on how to make your closing ceremony stand out. Many delegates have return tickets based on the ending time of the closing ceremony, if they are attending it. You should keep the ceremony as short as possible. During the closing ceremony the Chairs will hand out the Best Delegate, Honorable Mention and the Outstanding Delegate awards to the those that have proven to be worthy of them.
Just like the opening ceremony is the rst “formal” event that delegates, Chairs, press ocers and all the other participants will attend, the closing ceremony is the last. This is often the last time you will see the delegates – therefore you should keep the closing ceremony at as high a level as possible, to avoid downgrading the image you have been building during the entire conference.
>
Closing Ceremony Schedule Template: > Speech of DSG or SG (10 minutes max) > Speech of SG if there is a DSG, thanking the Secretariat
(10 minutes max) > The Chairs’ speeches summarizing the debates held
in their respective committees and the handing out of awards (5 minutes per committee) > Declaring the conference officially over > The Secretariat thanking the SG for the work he has done prior and during the conference.
RELATED LINKS Ar ti cl es Model UN: Flow of Debate
Key Questions How important is the socia l asp ec t of the conference? Mo re on th is to pi c: Committee Management
THE CONFERENCE BEGINS!
HowMUNPlanet Can Help Your MUN
The big event, the conference, is what it all comes to. Months of preparation have led to this point. If you’ve followed every advice from the book, this is your moment to glow. This chapter dealt with all the elements of the event itself. You could browse through MUNPlanet for a committee management tips. Our members have already written about all the fun committees they participated in, which range from the alltime classics such as the Security Council and ECOSOC, over historical committees, all the way to New Galactic Empire from Star Wars or the Seven Kingdoms from Game of Thrones. MUNPlanet can also be your news outlet for the conference. C’MUN from Barcelona used MUNPlanet to publish digital versions of their conference newspaper, called Clarion. This way you could even reach the people who are not participating and spread the latest developments in the committees. If you search for it, MUNPlanet can even give you ideas for handling creative social programs. What lies ahead is the future. Interconnectivity truly has the potential to become a game changer for the MUNs that adopt it.
6. After the show
Post-Conference Evaluation Post-Conference Communication with MUN Stakeholders Planning the New Organizing Team “Back to the Future”: Where the Project Cycle Ends and Begins
After The show
The time between the official closing of the conference and the beginning of the preparations for the next year’s conference is what we call the post-conference phase. In this phase the organizers evaluate and reflect on the results achieved and enjoy in the fruits of their work, ready to sustain such results or improve their conference for the next year.
After The show
Last but not least: why is Post-Conference important? Conference organizers usually think in impressions and numbers. When we see smiling faces of the delegates after a conference, we are happy. However, this element alone is not sufficient as an abs olute measure of success. Every serious MUN has to conduct the evaluation proces s of their conference, both among the delegates and the organizing team. This process helps you to get valuable feedback as well as data that you can use later to make your conference better. You can include a new committee, improve on your catering, fix some small details that matter to the delegates, and fine-tune any other element that is the subject of the survey and post-conference discussions. This important part of your conference success includes at least three steps: formal conference evaluation and analysis; saying thanks and communicating with everyone who made the conference possible, the delegates and your stakeholders; transition to the new organizing team and planning the next conference. This way the conference organization cycle ends, and the new team is ready to take over the reins of the MUN organization process from their predecessors.
3 steps :) formal evaluation and analysis thanks to everyone who made it possible transition to the new team
After The show
Post-Conference Evaluation Like any successful event, an MUN has to go through a formal evaluation process conducted by the organizers who want to hear the impressions of their team and the delegates about the conference. This can be done in several ways – the most common one being a survey. You need to make a questionnaire which will help you find out what people think about the event, and through which they will be able to offer you valuable suggestions on how to improve the next year’s conference. It is advised to complete the evaluation process in the week following the end of the conference, while your delegates’ impressions are still fresh.
u es t ionn ai r e k e a q a m y v e s u r
×
ho w / w he n ? whe r e / / wha t
pap er & pe n o r o n li n e w h a t c an b e d
o n e b e t t
e r ?
Some conferences do the evaluation in a traditional way (paper and pen) – asking the delegates to fill out a survey once the sessions have ended, but you can also do an online survey (e.g. via Google Forms, Surveymonkey, etc). The immediate post-conference evaluation gives the best results, because more delegates are likely to turn in their survey sheets, and their interest and engagement are at their highest at that time . On the other hand, they may be in a rush so they may not give you the elaborate responses they would if it were an online survey following the conference. The second tier of the evaluation consists of the surveys and briefings of the members of the organizing team. Their reflections can be of great help when it comes to finding out what has been done and what could be done better. For the analysis of the collected data you may rely on your internal capacities, and you want the results to enable you to take action after the conference. Thus, it is important to plan carefully and choose the right questions.
After The show
Wh ich ques t ions to ask? with the delegates’ feedback on The main point of the evaluation form is to pro vide you nce, networking opportunities experie learning n, issues dealing with their o verall satisfactio e rence. conf the next e and suggestions that can help you improv e according to your needs: Below are some general questions which you can customiz
- Wha t d id you th ink of the overall aspec t of the conference? - Whatwas the bes t elemen t of the conference in your opin ion (no t includ ing the soc ial even t)? - Wh ich elemen t needs to be improved (any sugges tion)? - Evalua te the conference a t the comm i t tee level - How would you judge the level of the Cha irs, or your Co-Chair? - Any recommenda t ions? ip, as some conferences such as This is crucial for the transition of the conference leadersh d during which thepre vious organizing GIMUN ha vedetailedde-brief ingsand atransitionperio its new leadership. This is ver y much team and the President hand the conf erence o ver to anization team w ith valuable new org the vides ro related t o the e valuation phase, which p insight and f eedback.
After The show
The MUN community on the importance of feedback “If an MUN has incurred big losses, the future of the project is in
“Well, customer feedback is the most important part of any
question. Such losses are also an indicator that the calculations
customer service, isn't it? Think about MUN like that. You organize
made during the planning process were not done correctly, or that
an MUN, and you need delegates = customers who will attend it. You
the budget was not followed as strictly as it should have been.”
want these customers to be satised. You want them to come again. You also want new customers. They are the most important thing
Juliane Jokinen TMUN
RELATED LINKS Ar ti cl es How to Evaluate Events
you have. You build your reputation through them. They are going to talk about you, in good or bad terms. Therefore, you need to know what your customers think about what you have given them, and you want to improve the customer experience.”
Ana Trubnikova OstseeMUN
Examples of MUN evaluation forms SOCOMUN Conference Evaluation
After The show
After the conference evaluation and the first debriefings, a successful MUN has to communicate with the delegates, partners and other stakeholders. Saying “thanks” to all involved in the conference is more than just a gesture – it speaks about the resolve and humility of the organizers who want to preserve the reputation of their MUN. It is a way to show appreciation and acknowledge everyone’s role and effort. It is about maintaining good relations and keeping the partners and sponsors for the years to come, as well as about spreading the influence and presence of your conference.
People love attention and no one will mind getting a “thank you” e-mail from the Secretary-General with signs of appreciation such as photos and other materials that speak about the awesome conference they had attended. On the other hand, it is part of your conference’s PR strategy, and today no event is considered successful without at least semi-professional PR. You can count on many of this year’s delegates either returning next year or recommending your conference to their friends. Therefore, professional and kind communication matters.
RELATED LINKS Key Questions What does post-conference communication with MUNers look like?
After The show
Assembling the New Organizing Team Depending on the timeframe of your conference, the moment the conference ends the organizers are expected to know who will be running things the following year. Some conferences have long-standing organizational structure (e.g. foundations, UNA) and have agreed on the principlesofthe successionof leadership.Some conferences, such as TEIMUN, used to announce their new Secretaries General at the closing ceremony, while others wait a few weeks or choose the new team and leadership after a couple of months. A general rule would be to choose the conference leadership as soon as possible, so that the organizing team can have enough time to complete its tasks.
Like in any business, or company, the organizing team has to keep a fine balance between experience and “fresh blood” in its ranks. It is not advisable to dismantle the entire team and replace it with completely new people. The practice of many MUNs says that 1/3 replacement per year is OK (e.g. KulMUN), as that way the team can function well and the new members will have 2–3 years to grow and develop. With such principles in place, the organizational culture will be preserved and the transitions between leaderships will not cause any major turbulence.
When it comes to the role of the new Secretary General, it is advised that the current and former SGs have meetings and briefings to coordinate their work programs, and that the continuity of functioning of the team be ensured. This is the case with GIMUN, arguably one of the best organized MUNs in Europe – and it seems to be the general rule in the topranked MUNs. However, different ways of coordination and passing on of the “conference steering wheel” are possible.
l ood” e and “f r esh b w e en e xp er i enc e b e t > bal anc e m en t p er y ear is OK epl ac > 1 / 3 r m er S Gs ha v e m e e t in gs and br i ef in gs t an d f or > c ur r en
After The show
After The show
Basically, this is the last step of your MUN conference cycle, and the first step of the next one. The evaluation has been completed, thank-you notes have been sent out, and the new team is now ready to sit down at the drawing board and see how to strategically improve the project in relation to the previous one. This is the point when the reflections and data from the evaluation are analyzed, and when the contours of the new team start to emerge. This is also where innovation takes place and creative solutions pop up as a result of interaction between old and new team members. The project continues and evolves at the same time. Would you like to introduce a new committee next time around? Will you need to get a better catering service, or introduce an MUN hospitality club (e.g. free student accommodations)? In case of budgetary constraints, can you think of better ways to attract sponsors and partners? The conference organizers are ready to plunge into a new organizational cycle while still remembering how great everything was the last time. They look back into the future before buckling down to all those meetings and other regular activities explained in the previous chapters.
v o l u t i o n e & y t i u n i t n c o
After The show
HowMUNPlanet Can Help Your MUN
After reading this chapter, you have come to know that what happens after the conference is equally as important as what happened during the event, or even prior to it. Preparation for the next conference starts the moment the current one ends. The overall results of the just finished conference will greatly affect the organization of the next one and the steps you need to undertake in order to follow the post-event procedure should be executed with great care. The survey is the tool that helps us differentiate between X’s and O’s once the event is done. It will help you fix the broken, remove it altogether, or replace it with something more intuitive. MUNPlanet can help you here to send digital surveys to virtually unlimited number of people and complete it in one tenth of the time it would usually take. The tricky part and the bottleneck for the future organization can also be the organizing team changes. With old members stepping down and new members coming to the stage, exchanging the baton needs to be done properly. This means that the replacing members will need to be briefed on all matters related to the organization so they can avoid making same mistakes and upgrade the future experience. Finally, everything that you would like to brag about regarding your uber-successful conference can be published on MUNPlanet. The content will always be there, visible through the topic MUNers are following, searchable via MUNPlanet’s search engine, indexed on Google and more. This way you will have the promotional campaign running the whole year around.
7.
FUTURE OF MUNs
T R EN D S AN D I NN O V A T I ON
Future of MUNs
In this section we will provide an overview of some trends identified by the MUN organizers and a look at the possibilities for innovation and future development.
Future of MUNs
Small Details “LIMUN is dedicated to being as eco-friendly as possible. Much of our apparatus has moved online, from the delegates’
“Some small and/or unique details include: writing the full name of each country
handbooks to certicates awarded to each delegate. Every eort is made to nd responsibly sourced materials for the
on our placards; having smaller bottles of water to waste less of it; providing
conference and minimize the amount of paper used each year. As an internationally minded organization with delegates
great breakfast and lunch options; providing plenty of coee (which is very much
from around the world we see this as a central priority. It is up to organizations, both large and small, to make a stand
appreciated!); having sta help provide guidance to new students or pointing
against the trend to over-produce and over-consume.
them to helpful personnel; having recycling bins for paper, aluminum and plastic; and a modern, up-to-date venue that resembles how Nationals runs their MUN.”
Another point that makes LIMUN really special is the student-led and student-designed aspect of the conference. Unlike other large conferences, LIMUN prides itself on being entirely student-organized and run, with almost no assistance from the outside world. This is evident in the nature of our opening ceremony, in the way in which members of our Secretariat are highly approachable and engaged, and in the manner in which the c onference operates.”
Wil Mountfeld, LIMUN
Tomas Ocampo, Inland Empire Conerence - Model UN
Future of MUNs
What are some global trends in the development of MUN?
Greening MUNs
MUN Franchising
“Choosing the right suppliers for your supplies ... Leveraging
“I think MUN will become far more franchised than it has been in
technology to make paper obsolete, where possible.”
the past. I think there is a tendency towards larger, more deeply sponsored conferences that cater to the masses in growing,
“You have to remember that making your conference "green" comes at
upcoming metropolitan cities. I think this is also a shame. I feel that
a price - literally. It is, however, a great qualier to set your conference
there is a special characteristic to smaller, student-led conferences
apart from others and to set an example for sustainable MUNing.”
that can not to be replicated in the wider, bigger world. Part of the hands-on feeling that comes from something small going wrong
Robin Christopher Schoss
or seeing the students organizing the conference running around rather than people in full time positions fullling their jobs because they are contractually obligated to do so.
Solidifying MUN Community
I don’t see MUNs dying though, which is a positive aspect at least. They have nally gained a much bigger foothold than they have had in the past and this is important in cementing their place as a forum
“My own view of what MUNs will be like in the future is that they will become even more international and cooperation between dierent MUNs will increase. MUNPlanet is currently a good example of the increasing need for building a stronger and more connected MUN community. I believe that what MUNPlanet is now doing will shape today’s MUNs to become more unied, with even stronger ties to one another.”
Juliane Jokinen , TMUN, Tallinn
for young people to experience a taste of the international world and the problems it faces.”
Wil Mountfeld, LIMUN, London
Future of MUNs
Digitalizing MUNs
Interconnectivity - “Revolutionizing Model UNs”
Traditional vs. online MUNs
“MUNs may be held without the delegates being present in
“The interconnectivity is the MUN operating system in which all the
“I don’t believe that the two stand in opposition to one another.
the room, as online MUN has already shown us; they may go 100%
committees and countries are mutually connected. What happens in
For some delegates, online participation is a vehicle to traditional MUN
green and have no carbon footprint whatsoever, since some
one committee may aect the discussions and the focus of others. In
participation. For others, online MUN is a way to get more debating time, in
schools have shown us the steps they have taken; they may even be
addition, all the delegates representing the same country at the conference
addition to what they are able to do at school or at conferences.””
regularly visited by important people from all elds of international
are in constant contact through our social media platform and our
relations and more. It seems the future has a lot in store for MUNs;
interconnectivity sessions, which allows the delegates to personally meet
I denitely cannot wait to see what is yet to come.”
the representatives of ‘their’ countries, as well as allies, in order to better
Lisa Martin, O-MUN
elaborate their strategy during the conference.
Tomas Ocampo, Inland Empire Conerence – Model UN
In addition, interconnectivity requires a strong press committee and media teams to create a strong press world, videos, and to bring innovative ideas. The interconnectivity MUN operating system represents a part of WebMUN’s goal to be as realistic as possible and to revolutionize the Model
"To me, one of the most amazing surprises as the online program
United Nations conference.”
developed was the degree to which ONLINE MUN had the same kind of deep impact as the traditional MUN programs. I really wasn’t prepared for this. But it makes sense; when you connect young people around problems or issues and develop a sense of community, that’s great stu. When you connect kids who otherwise experience a lack of connection (a young woman in Somalia, a group of emerging MUN delegates in Kabul, a home-schooled student in Florida, a lonely kid in Pakistan), that connection and the passion that runs through that connected community changes lives. It simply does."
Lisa Martin, O-MUN
Lucas Amorelli Ribeiro Kornexl, WebMUN 2014
RELATED LINKS Key Questions Where do you see M UN 5, 10, 50 years from now? Video Study Guides: Way to the Future
Future of MUNs
HowMUNPlanet Can Help Your MUN
Organizing Successful MUNs ebook is not closed once and for all. This breathing document has addressed some of the trends among the Model UN organizers, and the progress and change MUNs make bring new and interesting dynamics. MUNs are what the dedicated organizing teams and MUNers make of them - they develop, grow, change, fall and find different ways of life. Some MUNs are on the vanguard of change, some are more traditional, while the others are catching up and are embracing the challenges of evolution of the concept. This is how MUNPlanet can help you anticipate what is the next big development that could give you some food for thought about the ways MUNs go: •
•
Are you a shaper, or a follower of MUN trends? The greening of MUNs, integration with information technology, and MUN franchising have been singled out as some of the new trends, and we expect those to be even more pronounced in the years to come. Read how some of the MUN organizers see MUNs in 5, 10, or 50 years from now, and join the discussion. In what way do you plan to innovate your MUN organization practice next time?
welcome to
CONC LU SION
Conclusion
Model United Nations is organized at many different places (and levels) – from elementary school classrooms to universities, to conference centers and high-profile UN buildings. Its essence and focus is youth who think about the world and believe in MUN as a concept that aims at fostering peaceful coexistence and cooperation among people and peoples through education and socialization. In the early 21st century we have been experiencing a “third wave” of MUN development and its proliferation throughout the world. With the advent of modern technologies and the availability of ideas and opportunities for learning and action for youth in various parts of the world – the MUNs have become widely popular and are enjoying a historical peak. We expect to see this trend continue, and the benefits of MUN to become greater for socialization and promotion of a new generation of leaders, scholars, practitioners and globally-minded social entrepreneurs. This wonderful opportunity, however, also requires responsibility and use of knowledge and practices to preserve and improve MUNs for the future generations while expecting to see their impact on life and culture of peace in the world.
Conclusion
Through use of modern technologies, the MUN community is ever more connected and its members see opportunities for learning and cooperation. This is reflected through practices of real and dense Model UN network in the United States and Europe, with the rising number of conferences emerging on all continents. These practices find their continuation in the online communities such as MUNPlanet, where members can share knowledge and experiences connected to MUNs and beyond – which ultimately helps mapping the inner life of the MUN community and tracing the development of its internal conceptual reflections and connectedness to all spheres of life.
The present publication is a collection of such practices and reflections. They are uncovered and can be used as a reference for improvement by newly established MUNs, or any other more established MUN organizers who recognize the value of the empirical insights and analyses provided here. Those practical insights and analyses could serve as a point of departure for creative thinking and innovation in various sub-areas of the MUN organization process. And this is not a closed book – to the contrary, it leaves many open questions, and is open for new perspectives, mapping and discussion of the emerging practices. The authors of this publication had in mind the culture of asking questions and plurality of perspectives – with a goal of finding the optimum solutions. This plurality is conducive to innovation, and this is something the MUNs have to deal while reconciling the notions of continuity and change.
Let’s embrace this opportunity together and contribute to the r ise and realization of the MUN concept in learning, individual development and making a positive impact in the world.
Annex:tables and figures
Main Results – Geographics >
Some countries have more int. conferences than others.
>
Top 24 countries account for 77.6% of int. conferences, or 301. Other countries account for 22.4% of int. conferences, or 87 of them.
Top 10 countries account or 56.4% o all international conerences, or 219 o them. >
>
The highest number of int. conferencescan be found in U.S.A. Also, other countries with high numbers of int. conferences are Germany, India, U.K., Turkey, Canada, Poland, Netherlands, Italy, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Greece, China, France, etc.
Number of International Conferences by Countries (n=388) 10 0 8 7 9 0 8 0 7 0 6 0 56 5 0 36 3 4 4 0 30 2 0 16 15 2 0 12 11 1 0 9 9 9 8 7 7 6 5 5 5 5 10 4 4 4 4 0 ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) % 2 . 4 1 (
. A . S . U
% 2 . 9 (
% 7 . 8 (
% 1 . 5 (
% 1 . 4 (
% 8 . 3 (
% 1 . 3 (
% 8 . 2 (
% 5 . 2 (
. y n a d s y a i d n d n d K . e k a a a n a I n U r t s n l a m u i o l k r T a a C P r e e P h G t e N
% 3 . 2 (
y l a t I
% 3 . 2 (
a e r o K f o c i l b u p e R
% % % % % % % % % % % % % % 3 . 0 . 8 . 8 . 5 . 3 . 3 . 3 . 3 . 0 . 0 . 0 . 0 . 1 . 2 ( 2 ( 1 ( 1 ( 1 ( 1 ( 1 ( 1 ( 1 ( 1 ( 1 ( 1 ( 1 ( 2 2 ( l l r y e a a a a a n n e i c i e i i i o n r s o c e n e i i n s z a n a l d a a i p a t e h a e a r a S r s r a h g r a r C r n I m t B t u o c G n r G F d s o u n E e R u H u d n I A o e C F r n e a h i t s s O u R
Annex:tables and figures
Main Results – Timeline of Events >
There is a difference in the number of international conferences found per year in the last 64 years. The highest number of international conferences were founded in 2011 (33), 2010 (31), 2012 (31), 2013 (21), 2009 (20), 2007 (16), 2006 (14) and 2002 (10).
In these 8 im portant years 65.2% o all international conerences were ounded, or 195 o them. >
Also, in the last 10 years 69.9% of all international conferences were founded. In addition to that, in the last 20 years 89.3% of all international conferences were founded.
Number of International Conferences by Foundation Year (n=299) 35
3 3
32
31
31
30 25 19
20 1 4
15 1 0
1 0
8 5
5 0
7
) % 7 . 0 1 (
e r o f e b & 4 9 9 1
) % 7 . 1 (
5 9 9 1
6 3
) % 7 . 2 (
6 9 9 1
) % 3 . 2 (
7 9 9 1
8
) % 0 . 1 (
8 9 9 1
9
8
21
2 0
16
8
8
2 ) % 0 . 2 (
9 9 9 1
) % 7 . 0 (
0 0 0 2
) % 7 . 2 (
1 0 0 2
) % 3 . 3 (
2 0 0 2
) % 0 . 3 (
3 0 0 2
) % 7 . 2 (
4 0 0 2
) % 7 . 2 (
5 0 0 2
) % 7 . 4 (
6 0 0 2
) % 4 . 5 (
7 0 0 2
) % 4 . 6 (
8 0 0 2
) % 7 . 6 (
9 0 0 2
) % 4 . 0 1 (
0 1 0 2
) % 0 . 1 1 (
1 1 0 2
) % 4 . 0 1 (
2 1 0 2
) % 0 . 7 (
3 1 0 2
) % 7 . 2 (
4 1 0 2
Annex:tables and figures
Main Results – Timeline of Events >
There is a difference in the years of age between international conferences. Some int. conferences are younger, and some are older.
The youngest , 1 year old, int. conerences are GSMUN, WISC , MIMUN, Trichy MUN, Leeds MUN, S-MUNOB, GriffMUN and Venky Mock India Parliamen t . The oldest int. conerences are LAMUN (65), MUNFW (64), Berkeley MUN (63), HMUN (62), AzMUN (54) and NAIMUN (52). >
The average age of international conference is 10.6 years (n=299).
>
International conferences are most frequently 4 years old (modal value).
>
The youngest int. conferences are 1 year old, and the oldest int. conference is 65 years old.
Number of International Conferences by Years of Age (n=299) 35
3 3
32
31
31
30 25 21
2 0
2 0
19 16
15 10
1 4
8
8
8
9
1 0 8
5 0
1
) % 0 . 7 (
2
) % 4 . 0 1 (
3
) % 0 . 1 1 (
4
) % 4 . 0 1 (
5
) % 7 . 6 (
6
) % 4 . 6 (
7
) % 4 . 5 (
8
) % 7 . 4 (
9
) % 7 . 2 (
0 1
) % 7 . 2 (
1 1
) % 0 . 3 (
2 1
) % 3 . 3 (
3 1
) % 7 . 2 (
4 1
) % 7 . 0 (
5 1
8 5
3
2 ) % 7 . 2 (
7
6
) % 0 . 2 (
6 1
) % 0 . 1 (
7 1
) % 3 . 2 (
8 1
) % 7 . 2 (
9 1
) % 7 . 1 (
0 2
) % 7 . 0 1 (
r e d l o & 1 2
Annex:tables and figures
Main Results – Timeline of Events >
>
There are differences in the number of int. conferences within months by geographical regions. In January and December, the highest number of int. conferences is being held in Asia. Also, in February, March, April and November, the highest number of int. conferences is being held in Europe.
In general, there are no dierences in the number o int. conerences between geographical regions or May, Jun, Jul y, August and September.
Number of International Conferences by Months and Geographic Regions (n=382) 35 31
30
2 7
25 22
20
19
21
18
1 7 15
15
15 12 10
10
11 9
8 6
5
5 0
11
10
12
1
0 ) % 7 . 9 (
y r a u n a J
0 ) % 7 . 3 1 (
y r a u r b e F
0 ) % 0 . 5 1 (
h c r a M
1
1 ) % 9 . 9 (
l i r p A
5
4
3
2
0
0 ) % 3 . 5 (
y a M
6
1 0 ) % 3 . 3 (
e n u J
6 1
7 5
2 1
0 ) % 6 . 3 (
y l u J
. 6 % ;
6 2 0
) % 6 . 3 (
t s u g u A
a ( 3. i c = 8 5 ) A f r % ; n 2 2. 2 ( a c i r 7 ) A m e n = 1 1
9
8
5 11
) n = 1 5 9 % ;
1 3
3
2 0 ) % 8 . 4 (
r e b m e t p e S
0
0 ) % 4 . 8 (
r e b o t c O
1
1 ) % 5 . 5 1 (
r e b m e v o N
1
4 0
) % 3 . 4 (
r e b m e c e D
3 0 ( 6 1 ) A s ia ; n = 1 2. 1 % 4 ( e ) o p E u r ; n = 4 1 .0 % n i a ( a e c O
