Education and Training on Conflict Management, with Gravity DAO

[juankbell]

Hello everyone in the Optimism forum!

In this thread, we’d like to host an open conversation around the planning, implementation, and follow-up of a series of live education and training spaces on trust creation and conflict management, to be facilitated by Gravity DAO, during season 4 of the Optimism Collective.

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Gravity DAO is a project that carries the flag of Alternative Dispute Resolution in decentralized communities. We think that both individuals and organizations can develop competencies to transform conflict into potential energy for self-reflection and evolution, and we focus on practices that support the parties to deal with their issues by engaging in proactive spaces to look for solutions via dialogue.

Having clear processes to deal with multiple sources of conflict is a way to improve the awareness and implementation of social norms, and to care for the well-being of the organization by being able to hear and process the needs that arise.

We are following the implementation of our RFP bid to support the Code of Conduct enforcement process and we would like to propose alternatives to reduce governance overhead caused by conflict scaling into token voting instances without previous management mechanisms.

We want to complement our Free online course, with multiple live sessions (14+), to deliver a meaningful social skills boot camp that aims to:

• Help contributors incorporate conflict management into their everyday life: promoting a healthy environment for the organization.

• Identify a group of enthusiasts who can become Gravitons: agents for deep listening, mental health awareness, emotional support, de-escalation, and dispute administration inside the community.

The live sessions would be 1 hour long and be offered across two different time zones for diverse participation. The sessions will be recorded, and we’ll facilitate documentation of key challenges and learnings in a final report. The sessions can be hosted on multiple platforms and even when the main language used in our content is English, we can prepare some amount of sessions in at least 3 alternative spoken languages (Spanish, Portuguese, and French).

We are still coordinating the details of the schedule and the facilitators of the lessons, but the study plan should be communicated in this same thread soon, hoping to start executing it in the first weeks of August.

We extend the invitation to join these trainings to all members of the Optimism collective, but especially to the Support Nerds.

The Gravity DAO team will become more visible in the following weeks, having Bianca (@BiancaGadelha ), Nikola (@NikolaCreatrix ), and myself (@juankbell) as the main contact points. We invite you to connect with us here in the forum or via our Discord server for any questions or requests. We will endeavor to respond to inquiries within 1 Labor Day.

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Hoping for a fruitful collaboration, this is our initial communication until further updates.

[Tjark]

I’ve seen an event happening on Discord today and dropped into today’s session. I did not intend to join but stayed for the great quality and vibe!
Will add this to my calendar and visit the upcoming training sessions. Thanks for hosting this!

[juankbell]

Hello Optimism Forum! Following the implementation of our proposal, the training sessions that Gravity DAO will facilitate around Trust Creation and Conflict Management will go like this:

Starting Next week and until mid-September (end of season 4) there will be 3 weekly calls hosted in the Optimism Discord server to develop competence in transforming conflict, individually and collectively.

Steps for ideal participation.

1. Enroll in our Free Online Course and check the content that belongs to each week. The live sessions on Discord will follow the structure of the online lessons. Instead of presenting it again in the calls, we’d love to have a deep conversation with the audience around the topics and make our meetings practice-oriented.

2. Come to the calls you can. There will be two calls (Tuesday and Friday) held in 1 main timezone (1:00 pm UTC) and one call (Thursday) done in an alternative timezone (1:00 am (UTC). This should be scheduled on the Discord Server Events and in the Gravity DAO Calendar for easy reminders to everyone in the community.

3. Claim the weekly POAPs. At the end of each session, we’ll distribute a weekly NFT that will prove your participation in the training, and after successfully claiming 5 or more of them, you will be given a special Graviton Generation POAP that will certify basic capacities to transform conflict and mediate inside DAOs.

Study plan:

Topic	Date	time	Facilitator
Intro to conflict management in DAOs. What is conflict, why to manage it, and how to improve?	Tuesday 8 AUG	(1:00 PM UTC)	Juank
Intro to conflict management in DAOs. What is conflict, why to manage it, and how to improve?	Thursday 10 AUG	(7:00 PM UTC)	Juank
Trust Creation, Decolonization and Trauma Informed Culture in DAOs.	Friday 11 AUG	(1:00 PM UTC)	Durgadas
Conflict Management and Mediation in DAOs - State of the art, and Gravity’s Framework.	Tuesday 15 AUG	(1:00 PM UTC)	Nikola
Conflict Management and Mediation in DAOs - State of the art, and Gravity’s Framework.	Thursday 17 AUG	(7:00 PM UTC)	Juank
Nonviolent Communication and Ho’Oponopono. Life-enriching dialogue and difficult conversations.	Friday 18 AUG	(1:00 PM UTC)	TBA
Mental health awareness in DAOs - Personal time x Work	Tuesday 22 AUG	(1:00 PM UTC)	Bianca
Mental health awareness in DAOs - Personal time x Work	Thursday 24 AUG	(7:00 PM UTC)	Bianca
Optimism agreements, awareness of the social norms, shared understanding, and policy in place.	Friday 25 AUG	(1:00 PM UTC)	Bianca
BATNA & Negotiation Strategies.	Tuesday 29 AUG	(1:00 PM UTC)	Nikola
BATNA & Negotiation Strategies.	Thursday 31 AUG	(7:00 PM UTC)	Juank
Organizational Culture and Ostroms Framework	Friday 1 SEP	(1:00 PM UTC)	Livia
Miro: conflict management solution design space.	Tuesday 5 SEP	(1:00 PM UTC)	Nikola
Miro: conflict management solution design space.	Thursday 7 SEP	(7:00 PM UTC)	Juank
Conflict Simulation and Role Play	Friday 8 SEP	(1:00 PM UTC)	TBA
Gravitons, self-reflection, Feedback and next steps.	Tuesday 12 SEP	(1:00 PM UTC)	Bianca
Gravitons, self-reflection, Feedback and next steps.	Thursday 14 SEP	(7:00 PM UTC)	Bianca

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Considerations: There are still some special guests still To Be Announced, so please be patient with us while we coordinate with our network of Subject Matter Experts.

[juankbell]

Hello Everyone! This post is a gentle reminder of the 3 weekly training sessions on Conflict Management and Trust Creation that will be happening at the Optimism Discord Server until mid-September.

All invited The meetings are:

Tuesdays 1:00 pm UTC (Weekly topic main timezone)
Thursdays 7:00 PM UTC (Weekly topic alternative timezone)
Fridays 1:00 pm UTC (special sessions)

[juankbell]

Hello everyone! Here is our end-of-proposal update:

Successes:

• Delivery of 16 of 16 planned spaces: We executed all of the live meetings proposed, with two time zones and a special session per week. There are 12 recordings and the slides of the training in this folder.
• Facilitating solution design spaces towards the improvement of conflict management and code of conduct enforcement. We draft the creation of a conflict intake flow and propose steps for a transformation process. Week 5
• Evaluation of the training with interactive sessions to gauge participants’ perception and understanding of the topics. Week 6.
• Smooth coordination between the Op team and the Gravity DAO team. Featuring Veronica and Jesse as the main contact points. Having good relationships with optimistic stakeholders and perceived recognition of the work done within the community.
• Engaged 10 new Active Gravitons: conflict workers in your community, receiving a generation NFT for attendance of at least 5 of the topics covered during the 6 weeks. People who feel the intrinsic motivation to continue this management work on their active participation in the community.
• Evidence of 60 or more unique contributors impacted by at least one of the live sessions, having practical experiences related to the Gravity framework and the collective agreements, rules, and boundaries of the Optimism community. Complete list of POAP claims here.
• Prepare the soil for the possible creation of a conflict committee in future seasons. Making wide communication of Gravity DAO’s concepts about engaging positively in conflict, and Increasing individual and collective competencies in specific management skills.
• Share diverse practices to support the enforcement of the code of conduct without creating governance overhead.

Proposed next steps:

• Edit and prepare evergreen content with the recordings and resources of the training.
• Continue polishing the text of the online course to translate it into multiple languages
• Host a new Graviton training in 2024
• Facilitate more cultural and community-related work in the community.
• Nonviolent communication dynamics in working groups and public spaces.
• Awareness of Optimistic vision, code of conduct, and agreements in place
• Promote easy-to-access mechanisms for the prevention and mediation of frictions caused by participation.

Feedback:

• Conditions and expectations around financial aspects could be better managed. Our team delivered the proposal and is affected by not being able to cover some of the costs associated. We know that the OP would be locked for a year, but really needed some upfront funding for supporting operations.
• The “Stage” dynamic in Discord works great for presentations, but we noticed that to encourage participation from the audience, it would be good to have additional channels that can have fewer restrictions for opening mics and making breakout rooms.
• Even when the Sup-Nerds were our target audience, it would be interesting to see more participation from delegates/ foundation members in these educational and community-related events.