Prior to my recent visit to the UN Headquarters in New York I was not really sure what to expect. This was, in part, as it was difficult to get information online (Google seems to default to information on tourist/information tours rather than visiting for events). Therefore, I thought I would capture here:
- some tips for anyone attending such events for the first time (akin to a first time visitor guide)
- some reflections on this experience, including reflection on the UN, how to run events more generally, etc.
I should say these are from a position of ignorance – I do not have a qualification in international relations (or related discipline) so (as mentioned in the last post) these are the feelings of an “outsider” coming in. It is also fair to say that many organisations and events are confusing when you first attend and by day two many issues are resolved, this is true enough for a lot of the below but I thought there was some value in capturing this before I forget my time there.
The event I attended did have an “information note” of 17 pages. I will try and avoid repeating what was in that although I did find that too long, repetitive in places and (alas) inclusive of information that is not really needed anymore (e.g. information on local currency is Googleable – far better to focus on what is really needed and unique to the event/venue).
Things to know before you go
1: Passes/security
As you would likely expect, you need a pass to get through security. There are then some internal security areas you can and can not access based on your pass (for example you can get from the gift shop areas to the conference rooms but not beyond into the secretariat office space).
Temporary day passes for event: I was offered a one-day pass as I was presenting. It is worth knowing these seem to be deployed by UN staff literally handing them out by the guest entrance at the time they tell you to be there. How this works in bad weather I have no idea but when I was there you could see people handing out passes by the gate most mornings.
Longer term passes: as travel was an issue for me I wanted to register for the bigger event, rather than just go to present and then leave. This required registration online and there were multiple options – it was not clear to me which option was the correct one so you need to hope someone in your organisation is okay with UN-lingo and can guide you (kudos also to my side event’s UNITAR contact for helping with questions).
Once you are registered you have to attend the UN pass office, this is advertised as being open from 9:00-16:00 (Mon-Friday) and is roughly across the street from the entrance (although not with great signage and in one of the more rundown entrances, not a swanky building that many UN offices appear to be from the outside). When I arrived at 08:45ish, there was already a line being dealt with. Therefore, go as soon as you can, some people even mentioned they got their passes on the Sunday, I can not confirm if this is possible but it would 100% make sense for them to open on a Sunday before a big event. When I left at 09:30ish the line was out the door and down the street, none of those people outside will have made the opening session that started at 10:00. The line is slow moving but there is free Wi-Fi within the pass office. It is relatively painless to get the pass – you show your registration confirmation and passport. Note you get a photo taken there (I think you had to upload a photo in advance but this is not used for the pass) that is printed onto the pass (although the webcam approach to taking pictures was not great, I was too tall and had to duck whilst I saw other people who were too short for the setup).
Entrance security: Security guards at the gate do check you against your photo so if you are one of those people who changes hair, glasses, beard, etc a lot your photo might become out-of-date. I kept forgetting to take my sunglasses off much to the annoyance of the security guards. Unfortunately the entrance security does not differentiate between groups coming on tours and those attending events, therefore, I got stuck behind a large group of teenagers on one day which slowed passing through the airport-style scanners. Basically you do not want to be in a rush and should allocate plenty of time.
Pass returns: this was an odd experience – passes have an expiry date printed on the front (the Friday of the week for me) and instructions on the back insisting passes are returned. However, when I tried to return the pass on the Thursday, when I no longer needed it, I was told to keep it for any future events. This seems bad on multiple levels – the instructions on the card are wrong, the plastic cards are seemingly not recycled and presumably there is a level of security risk too. I presume the idea is that you can bring an old card for future renewals if you go again?
2: The UN as an organisation
The side events and different things going on during the week seemed very siloed, asking questions of UN staff seemed to reinforce this. Whilst those of us on the outside might think of the “UN” it is clear those more ‘in the know’ will see a series of entities. This is not unique to the UN, of course, I have worked for multiple organisations who have been going through their “one company x” phase of trying to bring units together, the UN no doubt has similar conversations internally.
One solution to the challenges put forward by a number of people during the session on the SDG related to water was that a “special envoy” was needed. I feel inclined to agree with the limited number of countries that said the UN should really already have enough powers to move the agenda forward without adding more layers/roles.
There was also a hint of cult of personality with a lot of António Guterres on videos on screens in hallways, photos around the place and references to him in talks. I found this odd for an organisation about humanity’s collective history and power.
3: The UN hierarchy
Few of the more senior UN, World Bank and other speakers stayed after sessions to discuss or network (in contrast to the external organisations who presented in the Learning, Teaching and Practice [LTP] event*). Meanwhile a lot of the work, such as laptop management and moving slides, was delegated to interns. Talking to a few interns it does not sound like it is the best place to work and in this regard the UN seems to take some bad practice from being based in the USA and their approach to workplace relations.
* Kudos to the diplomat from Switzerland who presented to the LTP side event (and did not just attend the main event as others seemed to).
I personally have a real problem with the approach of people being called “his/her excellency” and “distinguished representative”. I appreciate these are senior diplomats, heads of UN agencies, etc but it just reinforces elitism and self-importance. I would personally get rid of “right honourable” in UK politics too, as well as the honours system, because it all just feels like nonsense to me (do career diplomats/politicians deserve such praise?). On a very practical basis, with so many countries and many speakers in some sessions, you would save time by simply saying “country x next” rather than an elongated version (see also companies that insist on outros and intros on videos – time adds up folks).
Chairs of the main sessions also seemed to leave at the halfway point, I guess this is standard behaviour but it seems rude (to me) if everyone else stays for the duration. I appreciate this is “the day job” for UN staff and, therefore, not special but it is a useful reminder to us all that the mundane is often not so for everyone in the room. No doubt there will have been other people there, like me, where this might be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
3: Ear pieces
This might sound stupid (maybe the whole blog post does? let me know in the comments) but I had always presumed the UN ear pieces (that you will likely have seen on TV) were for translation.
In reality, you also need them for the English speakers (the vast majority) as the sound system in the room is very quiet (I guess so you can hear the ear piece over the in-room audio). Unfortunately, not all the chairs in galleries seemed to come with an ear piece and they also had a tendency to get tangled up with the chairs and other ear pieces.
Ear piece
4: Expect dry
I am sure it is recommended, due to the diplomatic nature, but be warned – the vast majority of speakers and presentations are very very drily delivered. Even senior UN people seemed to mumble into microphones and most speakers read from scripts. Again, I suspect this is a failure of the system (rather than individuals) as statements are published – nonetheless there are ways to be better via presentation skills, storytelling, etc. The pre-prepared nature contributed to a lot of repetition between country speakers. There was also a lot of repetition when some people presented at a side event (report launch) and then a wider event on the same topic. Kudos to Tajikistan who seemed to break the mould and specifically said they were going off script to avoid being repetitive in one session.
The main sessions had different types of speakers – panellists, discussants and then the representatives from countries. The country speakers got 3 minutes each – when people overran their mics were cut, leading to odd giggles among some gallery attendees, you get your laughs where you can I guess.
5: UN as a conference venue
Some things about the UN experience were great; the Wi-Fi seemed very fast, rooms are setup with audio facilities (for translation but also for live coverage on UN TV and amplification in the room), everywhere was very clean, plenty of toilets and water fountains…
…less good was that screens in the bigger rooms basically are not viewable from the galleries, meaning, when slides were used they were pointless. This might be why slides were not used much in the bigger sessions. Ultimately a few additional screens in the galleries would have been great given download links and other resources were shared via PPT.
It was also very difficult to catch people’s names and organisations – this was okay when the electronic nameplates were used to show the name of the speaker (I even got one) but reinforced for me one value of Zoom – that you can see peoples names! (Yes the website had speaker details but not always easy to check on that).
The smaller conference rooms (I presented to about 50 people in a room for 120ish) were fine but ultimately a basement conference room is a basement conference room. I didn’t really enjoy having to sit to present but the setup of having the slides in front of you, rather than behind as normal, was quite nice as a presenter (if difficult when attending sessions in terms of knowing where to look). If you are reading this before presenting at such a session – keep your content high on your slides : the rooms are not setup for most chairs to see the bottom of slides once projected.
The space is not great for networking, the conference rooms have some seating outside but otherwise it is really just a couple of different coffee/food units. One of these is very badly placed as it creates a lot of ‘coffee machine noise’ every time a conference room door is opened (at least in conference rooms 5 and 6 where I spent a lot of time). The food was actually quite good and not too expensive (New York in general seemingly being very expensive) but I suspect most people disappeared off for lunch elsewhere (the high level event folks certainly disappeared off while side event people, like me, seemed to stick around in the limited time between sessions).
Final point, a lot of event management seems to be left to the security guards stationed on lifts, room doors, etc. I suspect there could probably be benefits from a few less international relations graduates and a few more event management people on staff.
6: A way forward?
Ultimately, the UN HQ is just a building.
Yes, it is a building with iconic architecture and history but I perhaps had too idealistic a view before attending.
I am perhaps reading too much into things but a few statements during the week hinted at a realisation of the problems in the UN system and the interactions with NGOs and other stakeholders including : “drop the egos and collaborate for real” and a need to “come out of egos and logos”. Not to mention countries with political problems using their 3 minutes to simply complain about each other (which of course predates the UN and goes back to League of Nations problems).
President Trump and others have threatened UN funding. Having attended for a week, you could certainly see room for improvement, alas, I guess voting through changes is unlikely to ever happen. At the same time there were hints of a lack of funding (or bad spending of money there is) with worn furniture, the screen issues, etc. Activities could certainly be reviewed, for example, is calling on banning mobile phones in schools a good use of resources?
Submitting a proposal
I am not sure how much of this experience is universal to other events but for the side event I spoke at (2023 SDGs Learning, Training and Practice), at least, the process was time consuming with a lot of tight deadlines implemented from the UN host side. Was the effort worth it? Questionable.
Steps included:
- Submitting a proposal
- Then being grouped with other organisations in a thematic session
- Resubmitting a joint proposal with the others in the thematic session
- Preparing slides and summary to summit
- Presenting
- Submitting final slides and a summary.
We found out at the event that we were 1 of 10 selected from 130 submissions.
Prior to the event it would have been helpful to see examples of submissions, to have support with being (force) grouped into co-presenting with organisations you had not met before, etc.
During the event it was a shame the #SDGlearning hashtag did not seem to get much use but it could have been promoted more. Another reminder for my own practice and the need to group/promote our activities better on LinkedIn as we know that helps drive an increase in our audience.
Summary
An eye-opening experience, whilst disappointing on some levels also one where I met a lot of interesting people.
Whose Education Is It Anyway? 