If you have been following my blog posts regularly, you might have seen that one of the yearly commitments I choose is COMUN (Colombo Model United Nations). This is my 4th and last year in COMUN where this year as well I have been appointed the role of Head of Technology. My previous year, I had the same role as well, and the year before that I was Head of Media and then my first year I was a delegate which is mandatory. The work which I have to fulfill are essentially the same as the previous year, but this year, my team and I were appointed the role of rebranding our COMUN social medias. Post this year, we hadn’t been active on our social medias as we fully diverted our attention to the website and the videos we created to give more light to the conferences and the committees. This although sounding like an easy process, it contained many parts prior to final completion and especially since this was my first time doing something like this, it was important to learn more about it first (LO1). First, we had to go through a planning process with the secretariat team.(LO5). We had to make sure that every EXCO (executive committee) member had sent in their photo, but also sent in their permission forms to allow us to use their photos on our social medias. This was an important step. Next, talking to the exco we had to make sure the correct order to post each of the committees with their respective chairs. This meaning that, the Presidents and the Vice Presidents come before the chairs for each post. Next for the overall aesthetic, when you click on the COMUN instagram profile we planned it out so that the secretariat would come first and then it would go down the ranks. We went through many renders and designs for the overall cover page for each post:

This photo above was one of our first designs, we did not end up using it because of the fact that it does not contain any logos or symbols to show that this is an COMUN committee (LO6). We then next decided to include one with the logo of COMUN:

This was the second design that we brought up to the secretariat, in this as I said before, we made sure to include the COMUN bird to give people a reminder to what their looking at. This was also denied by the secretariat, not because of the inclusion of the logo, but because we had to make it look better. This next render also includes the logo but we made it more simplistic:

This was the last render we made, and it was approved by the secretariat. For this specific cover page for the post, we reduced the opacity of the logo and made it more central. This attracts the eye of the reader more because they would be more interested into seeing what is in the background. Finally once the cover page was finalized we moved on to make the post template for the picture of the EXCO member and their role. For this, it surprisingly took us one render which looked like this:

 

This would come after the cover page above. This post gives the audience the information of who does who in that each committee. For example above we can see the name of the secretary general, and then below that, her position. We finally then got to start posting the posts. We made sure to start first with the lower ranked committees because our secretariat wanted to be at the top of the COMUN page when you first enter the profile. This is what the final product looked like:

The main purpose of rebranding our social media page was to bring more attraction to this years conference, and hopefully increase the delegate numbers to make this conference better than last year. As I mentioned previously on top of this, I had to change the entire website with new dates, new topics per com, new pictures and etc. This was especially difficult and time consuming because going through each HTML file, copy and pasting new topics and file names was rigorous. But it had to be done. For the full website process, refer back to “COMUN Tech!” or https://cas.osc.lk/lpiyatunga22/2020/11/06/comun-tech/

 

Learning Outcomes:

We see that LO1 was experienced even in the first section where I talked about the social media rebranding, where I had to set up all the camera gear and the mics which was something new to me. This allowed me to learn a lot about how to structure posts and allowed me to grow in that area. Next LO2 and LO3 was experienced throughout this whole process because I undertook challenges to set up everything technologically for the conference and I learned how to plan and initiate the whole tech process with my team. LO4 was demonstrated as COMUN takes place every tuesday starting about 3-4 months prior to the conference date but also I have to commit to doing the extra work that I had to do to prepare for the conference. COMUN being all student planned, it taught me how to work with people to get things done methodically, especially the secretariat in this case, whilst working with multiple people (LO5). Lastly LO6 engaged me with many global issues in the sense that, we were exposed to these global issues whilst working for each of the committees.