Note: Continuation from Tuesday’s entry, interview with Brian Cho.

Advice for Schools Interested in Bidding
Brian Cho: Pay attention to detail. Your bid packet is a representation of your team and its quality. If your bid packet is a couple loose-leaf printouts in black and white and is unorganized, it will be a reflection of your (lack of) commitment to the conference. So you will want to make a bid packet that is aesthetically pleasing. But more importantly, the content inside has to be solid as well. Like I said, it’s not so much the actual details of the conference programming that Mirae is looking for but showing them that you know the various aspects of the conference from logistics to programming, to finances, etc. So you will want to include all those things in the packet. I would also say that the vision and theme for the conference is important as well. Even if you don’t have the specific speakers set for the bid packet, having a clear vision of what you want to achieve through the conference is important.

If He Was to Redo Princeton’s Bid
BC: I guess I would try to focus more on how to make the conference unique compared to the past conferences. I would want to invest more time in brainstorming new ideas for the conference and try to come up with innovative ways to make the conference better. I think it would be cool to try new programming format and totally off the wall things since KASCON has been kind of the same for years.

(Last words of advice and downloadable Bid Guidelines from last year, after the jump)

Last Words of Advice
BC: Although I know that it might be exciting to bid for KASCON and have hopes and dreams of a great conference, I would like to caution schools who want to bid to really look at their school and see if they have the resources to pull off the conference. Some schools are more accommodating than others when it comes to student-initiated projects. We were fortunate to have tremendous support from various departments at Princeton. I don’t think we could’ve pulled it off if we hadn’t had the resources like we had.

Another thing is to see if you have the man power to organize the conference. Being that it is a large conference, you need people outside the 10-12 member board to pitch in when the actual conference comes around. Volunteers are crucial to a successful conference and so I would advise potential hosts to see if they have the support from their student body before they bid.

We have obtained and posted the KASCON21 Official Bidding Notice from last year in case you’re wondering what a bid guideline might look like (download PDF now). We’re sure that eager schools looking to host KASCON next year have already obtained the guidelines through back channels and are well underway in preparing the bid packet, but for those who’d like to take a last crack, we hope this will help.

One thing to note is that previous KASCONs have involved joint conferences by schools in the same area. For example, the 1991 KASCON was co-hosted by Columbia, NYU and West Point, and the 1993 and 1999 KASCONs were co-hosted by Stanford and UC-Berkeley. There hasn’t been a co-hosted KASCON since 1999, so if you’re in a good spot to collaborate with other schools, joining forces may not be a bad idea. Also, there hasn’t been a KASCON in the South since University of Texas and Rice co-hosted in 1996 – perhaps schools from Georgia or North Carolina could change that?

The great thing about KASCON is that it prompts many students to set ambitious goals and figure out ways to execute the monumental task of running a conference. The conference also cultivates an environment for new ideas to gain momentum, developing into full-scale projects such as Liberty in North Korea (borne of Yale’s KASCON18) and even our humble Tailor Made blog, which came into being after our workshop at Princeton’s KASCON20. If done right, KASCON can truly find ways to empower the students who attend.

As observers of trends in Korean American student leadership and organizations, we’re big fans of KASCON but also have many suggestions and ideas for improving it – those thoughts and other KASCON-related topics will be examined in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

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Posted by Peter Kang