Four Points to Keep in Mind When Starting a MUN Conference

I copied and pasted an article I wrote for "Best Delegate" a few years ago.

For you MUN advisers/teachers out there, check their website out at www.bestdelegate.com An awesome place for MUN-related tips, material and conference information.

Nickolas Harris is the Director and founder of the international MUN conference, the Global Education City Model United Nations (GECMUN) conference held on Jeju Island, South Korea. He is also the founder of the San Pedro Sula Conferences (SPSCON) in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He has been coaching MUN for eight years, with experience coaching delegates in the Middle East, Central America, and East Asia, and teaching a MUN elective course at Escuela Internacional Sampedrana and Korea International School, Jeju.

I’m a millennial. As much as it hurts at times to admit my connection to a generation often associated with being difficult to manage at the workplace and having an odd affinity for avocado toast (which I love), I have found the way I approach MUN conferences very conducive to the so-called “stereotypes” of the so-called “millennial generation.”

So, what are the stereotypes? We are a generation often criticized for being overly idealistic and difficult to manage, but we are also considered to be the ones looking for innovative solutions for existing institutional problems. For example, Brian Chesky challenged the existing structures of hotels through Airbnb. John Zimmer challenged the inefficient organizational system of taxis through Lyft. Daniel Ek found paying $2.00 for an individual song overpriced, and came up with the innovative idea of a mass music streaming service, Spotify. We are a generation which has been able to spot organizational and structural flaws and suggest and implement changes.

How does this rather long preface relate to MUN? As an advisor, I’ve had the great fortune of being able to work at schools that have provided students with opportunities to visit and attend various conferences around the world. Many of these conferences provided my delegates with extraordinary experiences, but also gave me insights into which conferences tend to do well and which have room for potential improvement. After attending dozens of conferences in numerous cities and countries around the world, I made conclusions about what improvements were needed and what type of trends I noticed in the MUN circuit. This motivated me to start a new conference where the primary purpose of the conference was not for the organizers, but for the delegates. 

So, what type of issues did I repeatedly see? And how did we attempt to remedy these issues?

#1 Oversized Committees This is perhaps the single greatest issue for any large conference. A large committee is simply not helpful for students at all levels. When conferences exceed the size of more than fifty delegates in a room, often the following issues arise:

1. The high number of delegates frequently results in a lack of decorum. It is difficult for college students or high school student chairs to manage that number of teens in one room and maintain a high level of decorum. There is a reason why our classrooms in schools have only 15-25 students. When the classroom exceeds a certain size, decorum becomes near impossible to maintain.
2. The high number of delegates prevents the opportunity to speak. MUNers all know the feeling of raising a placard over and over again for fifteen minutes only to be called upon once. This could happen even in a committee with fifteen delegates if all delegates are highly engaged and active. When the number of delegates gets as high as 50+, simple math would tell us that in a competitive conference, speaking time could be potentially limited to a maximum of three times every two hours, assuming most delegates are engaged. Three times in two hours is not enough. This, especially, is painful for me to witness when I am attending an international conference and I see teams who have traveled thousands of miles so their students could only speak two-three times in a two hour period and only a dozen times in the entirety of the conference. 
3. The high number of delegates makes effective communication difficult. During an unmoderated caucus (for UNA-USA) or for a lobbying session (for THIMUN) when there are over 50 delegates, the communication is far less purposeful, and often delegates find themselves aligning simply based on the geography of the room. The limit in communication is not limited to unmoderated caucuses. The chairs have difficulty communicating with delegates in general when there are so many in the same room. A major part of MUN is for the delegates to be able to communicate and learn from the chairs--how do we expect any of this learning to happen when the chairs have to oversee so many students at once?

#1 THE SOLUTION The remedy to this issue is quite simple. Smaller committees! Yes, it comes with a price-tag, fewer delegates does mean less money for a conference to make, but sometimes it's worth the cost if it means ensuring a quality experience for the delegates. This is a very simple solution for such a serious and pervasive problem.

#2 Lengthy Conference Schedules The scheduling for conferences is often much too long. I understand, especially when run by teenagers and young adults, that the organizers want to maximize the number of sessions and activities. The organizers often become overly excited and want to pack in as many activities and events in one day as they can. Often, what these organizers are failing to see is that delegates are only fourteen to eighteen years old. They are not adults. The students are used to regular school days and are not ready, physically nor mentally, to cope with a 9 AM to 9 PM schedule. Lengthy conferences comes with an array of issues:

1. Low-quality discussions and debates at the end of the day. I often see exhausted and weary students who are ready to go home well before the end of the conference day is scheduled to end. MUN should be about quality, not quantity. It is a shame to waste the last two hours of the day on a poor debate when students could simply go home (or to their hotel), and get ample rest in order to be ready for the next day.
2. The lengthy schedules deter students from completing their school work. The students are students first, and MUNers second. Every MUN student has a full-time job as a high school student, which comes with various responsibilities. It's irresponsible for conferences to set up schedules that are all-consuming of a delegate’s time. On more than one occasion, I have seen high-achieving students return from densely scheduled weekend conferences during which they were unable to keep up with their homework. They return to school on Monday having fallen behind. We must keep in mind the students’ well-being first and foremost when constructing a MUN conference schedule. 

#2 THE SOLUTION I keep in mind two aspects when organizing a conference: how does this schedule compare to a school day? And, how would the average 15-year-old student cope with the proposed schedule? It's simple: an average school day is something along the lines of 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM, with some breaks in between. I try to make sure that the conferences I direct are not much longer than the average school day. If we start at 9 AM, we are done by 6 PM. 

#3 Unclear Awards Criteria At many conferences, the awards are based on a rather vague and open-ended awards criteria, and delegates often find it difficult to prepare, culminating in frustration when they feel that the results were not in their favor. Or conversely, they find themselves very surprised and perplexed when they win an award when they thought they did a poor job. The vagueness of awards criteria creates the following issues:

1. Bias towards host schools and/or host schools’ friends. MUN is a truly unique system in regards to “winning” because the very people handing out the awards can be students of the same age, sometimes even from the same school. Therefore, it is essential that conferences provide a comprehensive guide for delegates which clearly explains the award system, and make sure that chairs are trained to be consistent with their evaluation methods. Without a transparent method, schools can get accused of being biased towards their own delegates. Unfortunately, in my career, I’ve witnessed at least a dozen times where there was some foul play by chairs, all of which could have been avoided by having a clear explanation of the awards process. 
2. Frustrated advisors and head delegates. MUN head delegates and advisors spend months helping their teams prepare for the conference, and can be frustrated if they do not have clarity and understanding of how to best prepare students if they are not given a specific set of categories and methodologies explaining awards.

#3 THE SOLUTION Create a comprehensive evaluation sheet that all chairs can use. By having a standardized evaluation sheet, the conference can avoid inconsistencies from committee to committee, and provide attending delegates with a mutual understanding of what is expected to win an award. 

An example of an evaluation sheet

#4 Ineffective and Wasteful Opening and Closing Ceremonies There is a great article written about this problem with closing ceremonies by Sam Povey titled “Why Closing Ceremonies Are No Good and How We Can Fix Them”. My sentiments would echo this writer’s perspective:

1. Keynote speakers. It's great to have keynote speakers who have an inspirational message from which students can learn; I want to make it clear that I am not against keynote speakers. The problem lies in two caveats: length and purpose. When it comes to length, speeches are often painfully long. In fact, I've seen keynote speakers at times exceed 30 minutes. I’ve sat through at least a dozen keynote speakers who I found inspiring and interesting, but I noticed students in the crowd who were disengaged, sleeping, or reading their opening speech notes. At the end of the day, these are 16 year old students excited about the MUN conference beginning in less than an hour. Their minds are on the conference itself and not focused on the keynote speaker on many occasions. 
2. Another issue is the selection of a keynote speaker and the cost associated (if any) of having one. Often the keynote speakers are individuals who have held or hold some type of government or NGO/NPO related position. They often have little to no understanding of what exactly MUN is, and deliver simple platitudes, to directly quote Povey, sentences like “importance of global dialogue, and how we are all destined to become leaders of our generation.” My advice would be to have speakers who, first of all, know what MUN is, and, if possible, who can actually speak to the students. A diplomat who is going to drop by for one hour and then leave is not ideal. 
3. In a similar vein, the cost associated with having a noteworthy keynote speaker can be an issue. For a conference we attended in the past in Seoul, South Korea, there was a hefty $500 USD school fee. After attending the conference, I inquired of the conference organizers why the school fee was so high, and the answer I received was that the school fee was used to pay for their keynote speaker. With twenty schools in attendance, that means they spent $10,000 USD on the keynote speaker; this should be spent on the students, not the speaker.
4. Long Closing Ceremonies. The closing ceremonies should celebrate the event, organizers, chairs, delegates, advisors, and of course, it should be a time for delegates to be awarded for their hard work. As the opening ceremonies, they should be kept to a minimum in regards to time. Now, this can be a little difficult given that a large conference will need time for each committee to run through their awards quickly—it's difficult but possible. At GECMUN, for example, we have eleven committees and our awards time during our 50 minute closing ceremony is limited to 30 minutes. Therefore, we are adamant that our chairs spend no more than two and a half minutes per committee in order to keep to our time target. I have been to at least a dozen conferences where I have seen chairs and secretariats give thank yous for one to two minutes straight on more than one occasion. On one hand, I commend that they are showing their appreciation for others, but we have to keep in mind that there is limited time, students have short attention spans, and it becomes rather redundant when the seventh chair goes up to thank the secretary general for the seventh time. Everything in the schedule should be included because it is necessary; it’s unreasonable for chairs to be speaking for over five minutes, and secretary generals do not need to be giving 10+ minute speeches when the time is quite limited. These are MUN closing ceremonies, not the Academy Awards. 

#4 THE SOLUTION Invite speakers who will have a meaningful message—do not be worried about the name and occupation, but focus on the message. I’ve made this mistake before. I do not want to specifically name who and when, but for one of the conferences I directed, we invited an individual with a higher level governmental position, and the individual gave a 15 minute speech, which was clearly not written by him, without any specific or meaningful message. As Povey's article mentioned, it was a speech simply full of statements like, “You are the future.” Also, when inviting an individual to speak, use only limited funds; $10,000 for a speaker is ridiculous. Finally, for opening and closing speeches, confirm with the secretariat and chairs that there is a strict time limit, and when they have 30 seconds left, indicate the time to them.

Starting a new conference is never easy. It's difficult to find a new venue, you have to convince your school and administrators why there is a necessity to start your own conference, you have to create a certain degree of hype amongst the students—there are so many variables which make it difficult to start something from nothing, but you can avoid simply repeating the same mistakes made and create conferences that are more efficient and meaningful for students.

In Summary:

1. Make the committee sizes small. No more than thirty students per committee.
2. Make the conference schedule reasonable. Avoid exhausted students engaging in inefficient dialogue at the end of the day; remember quality over quantity.
3. Make a clear-cut set of criteria for awards. These should be accompanied by a clear and concise evaluation sheet, which can be utilized by chairs and viewed by delegates and advisors prior to the conference.
4. Have keynote speakers only if they are going to provide delegates with a meaningful message. Remember, it is not a necessity to have a speaker if an appropriate fit cannot be found. Make sure that the secretariat knows exactly how much time they have when speaking at the opening and closing ceremonies.