This guest article series was written by Nickolas Harris, 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.
Miss the beginning of this series? Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3!
#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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Its 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.
To summarize the entire series, keep these four things in mind when starting a new Model UN conference:
- Make the committee sizes small. No more than thirty students per committee.
- Make the conference schedule reasonable. Avoid exhausted students engaging in inefficient dialogue at the end of the day; remember, quality over quantity.
- 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.
- 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.
