When your task is to plan a conference for 500+ people, you know it’s going to be a difficult journey …
MUN@UWC 2019 concluded last weekend and the first thing that jumps to mind is how relieved I am. Relieved that the conference concluded without any significant issues arising (barring the internet connectivity issues that plagued the committee rooms throughout the weekend). Relieved that I was able to prepare and win my case in the International Court of Justice committee room, bagging the ‘Best Advocate Pair’ award along with my partner. Relieved that all the late nights working on the conference will finally be over, and I can actually prepare properly for my next Spanish test.
Looking back, there are things that I would do differently and will do differently for next year – when I’ll be the one leading planning for the conference. I think an important consideration for event planning is that timelines will get delayed, regardless of how well thought out the details might be. Take the procurement process I was in charge of for instance. The idea was for our gavels to be ordered a month leading to the conference, and for them to arrive 2 weeks prior to the first day. Instead, they came 2 days before the official opening of MUN@UWC 2019. Should’ve seen it coming I suppose, what with our supplier being based in Malaysia …
Another important thing takeaway is you really need to keep pushing and just complete the work. This is something a concept that’s was introduced to me while organizing the MS conference in January of 2019 and has been re-inforced: you CANNOT put things off for ‘later’. If you aren’t constantly addressing what needs to be done, you’ll find everything is piled up at the last minute and the quality just goes to shit. I mean, the PRINTING. We kept saying the certificates and lanyards could be done just a few days before the conference, we had time. That exact logic drove us to spend 2 frantic evenings attempting to complete the mountain of work that printing was. We only managed to get the entire deed done on the second day of the conference.
This is particularly interesting because it’s an uncommon application of the concept of resilience. Normally it’s associated with the idea of bouncing back from failure, unflinching in the face of impossibility. But having the discipline to stick to your own created timelines, critical for planning any kind of (CAS) experience, is it’s own special kind of resilience – and one I’m only starting to develop.
Photo with senior exec members
