Colored sticky notes help delegates brand themselves and put notes into context of their resolutions. This delegate is using teal and corresponding primarily with a delegate using orange and another delegate using white with blue footing (taken from a Hilton hotel).
Passing notes is a time honored tradition at Model UN conferences. It’s the least disruptive way to maintain communications while formal proceedings are taking place and electronic devices may be banned or perceived as off task. But note-passing can be messy to manage — the piles of scrap paper at the end of every committee session are a testament to this. Worse, sometimes notes are lost or even forged when gavel hunters don’t play nice with the notes.
I observed this delegate’s desk and the note organization there made me think of three techniques that can help make note-passing more effective:
1. Use sticky-notes. Sticky notes are great because it allows you to organize them in context of other paperwork, such as sticking them next to the clause in the draft resolution that the delegate is asking about. They’re the right size for a quick question — notes should not be lengthy if you want quick responses — and won’t require you to rip off pieces of paper. Lastly, they make clean folds before you pass them on.
2. Brand yourself with a color or custom letterhead. Having a specific “brand” to your notepaper helps you stand out to others, and more generally helps you manage which notes are yours and which notes are from other specific delegates. This can be done by using a specific color. Or collect notes from your conference hotel, but use them at your next conference so it doesn’t look like everyone else’s at that hotel. In case of having someone use the same color, then try to get a custom set of sticky notes if you can afford it. Custom “letterheads” (for example, they’re preprinted with the country name and flag) are more popular on the THIMUN circuit.
3. Have an inbox and outbox. Organize your table so that there’s an inbox of all the notes that you’ve received and need to respond to, and an outbox of notes that you’re going to batch together and have the page or admin staffer deliver for you at once. This helps keep things organized and efficient.
