Lesson 1 - Your Conference Prep Road-map
Getting ready for a Model UN conference requires a great deal of preparation, but there are ways to make this process easier. In this section, we’ll go over the key aspects of Model UN conference preparation and give you a few tips to make sure that it’s as easy as it can be.
How does a Model UN conference work?
Your normal Model UN conference will take place over the course of a weekend – starting on Thursday night and ending Sunday morning. The goal is to have Resolutions submitted and passed by the end of the weekend. Ideally, your Bloc will be the one with the Resolution that passes.
A Model UN conference will feature a collection of committee sessions where Delegates hold discussions and progressively get closer to finding a solution to their problem. Delegates will advocate for solutions based on the research that they prepared before the conference.
When should I start Conference prep?
Timing your Conference preparation really depends on three things:
Conference deadlines
Preferred learning style
Your level of experience
Conference deadlines are important since a conference will normally require a Position paper to be submitted a few weeks before the conference. Since having a completed Position paper essentially means that you’ve completed your conference prep, you’ll have to be ready by then.
When preparing for your first conference you should make sure to give yourself even more prep time to make sure that you’re ready for a number of possibilities – things rarely go according to plan in Model UN! This might mean that you read your background guide and start thinking about solutions around 6 weeks before your conference.
There’s no such thing as too much preparation when it comes to Model UN. Everything you do will help you to better understand your topic and help you to exhibit that to your committee.
Example Timeline (Post for the 21st October)
Model UN preparation timeline
Before you start your conference, there are 4 things that you always need to get done. This includes:
Reading your background guide
Researching your topic
Writing a position paper
Preparing your opening speech
Next, we’ll walk you through each of these steps and show you what you need to do:
1. The Background guide
Reading your Background guide should always come first. It’ll give you all the information you need to get your conference prep started off right. A Background guide gives you an overview of your topic, areas for research, and potential solutions to consider.
Your Background guide will give you your first introduction to the problem that you’re tasked with solving; with this information, you’ll want to start thinking about how this might impact your committee and what your role in it will be.
A Background guide can also be very useful since you can get a brief introduction to the members of your dais along with an idea of what they will expect from you.
To make sure that you get everything out of your Background guide, you need to do a few things first:
Model UN Background guide tips
Attacking your research binder properly
2. Research/Building your binder
After you’ve figured out a strong starting point by going through your background guide, you’ll want to look into other sources and come up with a unique problem-solving approach. In building this picture, you’ll want to access as much relevant information as possible. This means that you should try to find:
1 – Key statistics
2 – Prominent individuals
3 – Past solutions that have been tried and succeeded/failed
4 – Other states positions – both similar and different to yours
Distinguishing between Opinion and Facts
Like with any research assignment, some of the research that you come across might not be factual, this means that you shouldn’t use it in your Position paper.
It’s always best to try and link anything you say in your Position paper to quality sources and authors. This can help you to be much more certain of its validity. Of course, if you find someone’s opinion to be insightful, you can try and adapt their interpretation, you can also try to find the sources that they used for their work.
If you’re ever uncertain about using any type of material, make sure that you speak with your team advisor and consult the sourcing manual for your conference.
A few sites to get you started
Each topic and committee will have different research requirements and so certain sites that will be more useful. But if you’re ever stuck and don’t where to start, these sites can be valuable to help you get some inspiration.
UN News
Find the latest UN updates, see if there are any relevant developments for your topic
Ciaworldfactbook
Find detailed country profiles
Economist Intelligence Unit
Economic reports/Risk assessments and Country profiles
Reuters
Trusted news source covering a wide range of topics
Yale Avalon Project
Archive of Historical and Legal documents
Links from your background guide
Relevant links specific to your topic
Research guide - more in depth research
What to include in your Research binder
In Model UN, you’re allowed to bring a binder of your research with you into the committee room. Here’s a few things that you should always have on hand:
MUNprep Binder Builders - Coming soon!
3. Position Paper
After you’re done with your research, it’s time to start writing your Position paper.
Your Position paper gives you a chance to organize your thoughts and is the most important part of your conference prep experience.
The Position paper is an essay that covers the committee topic from your delegations perspective. You should discuss how the topic is relevant to your delegation, how past actions have affected you, and how you want to deal with the problem.
In general, you want to include
State Position
State Role
Past Actions
Solutions
Solving your Committee topic
When you’re making a solution for your conference, you want to keep a few things in mind – at MUNprep – we want to make your solutions GROOVY!
This helps you to make sure that you always attack the problem-solving stage in the right way and you have solutions for every eventuality in your Model UN conference.
To learn more about how to keep your Model UN solutions GROOVY, go here.
What makes a Great Position Paper?
The Best Position Papers:
1 – Show an Understanding of the matter at hand
2 – Are Carefully Researched
3 – Have the GROOVY-est solutions
4 – Concisely deal with the problem at hand.
To learn more on Conference prep and Position papers – check out our guide here!
4. Opening Speech
The opening speech should be your final step of the conference prep process. It’s your first chance to astound both the other delegates and your dais and is more or less a summary of the most important facts squeezed into a minute-long speech.
In this speech, you want to be clear to outline the main priorities for your delegation and show other delegates that you are open to working with them.
You know that you’ve written a strong opening speech when you start receiving a string of notes from other delegates asking to work with you.
What to include
To keep things simple – try and think about your opening speech like a summary of your Position Paper: Suggest your preferred topic, introduce your state and their position on the topic, bring in a few statistics to make your position seem stronger, and finally outline your problem-solving approach.
To make sure that your speech sticks – you can consider including:
A Quote
An anecdote
A Call to action
An Acronym
All of these techniques can help your speech stand out more and make the strong first impression that you want. Make sure you only add what’s appropriate and don’t try to fill your speeches with quotes and anecdotes. If it helps you to get your point across, then you can consider it as a worthwhile addition.
Adjusting your speech
The last thing that you should consider is that you never know how long your opening speech will need to be. Make sure you practice your opening speech and make a few different versions to account for the different possible speech times that may be required.
Sometimes, you might get unlucky and won’t get a chance to use your opening speech. This happens to everybody but you can still make use of it! You just have to be creative and find ways to use it in a moderated caucus and be proactive with the notes that you pass to other delegates.
