Community Layer Spotlight 6: Xandra Dozet

While human coordination has come a long way due to the nature of community activations in the crypto space and the evolving Community Layer, we’d all be hard-pressed to complete this work without effective productivity tools.

When it comes to said tools and the various styles of communities across web3, Charmverse is one of the more comprehensive of the bunch. Hundreds of communities across the space have used this simple yet effective operations platform as a destination for documentation, voting on proposals, member directories, rewards distribution, and so much more. But Charmverse would be nothing without the people who make coming together on the platform possible. It takes a community manager like Xandra Dozet, dedicated to the breadth of the entire space to guide many such communities to the features they need to thrive each day.

She’s sure to invite you in with warmth and friendliness at an event, in the Charmverse Discord server, or in one of the more than 40 X Spaces she’s hosted this year alone. Like others who have found themselves in community roles, she doesn’t have a lengthy career in “web2” or even more traditional social media community management. She came to the space from a bar and beer brewery management career. Not your typical trajectory that’s for sure. This just goes to show the importance of networking and showing up authentically wherever you are, in whatever career you cultivate for yourself.

Xandra found her first inklings of community through the beer industry, where she connected with other women at mutual events, but it wasn’t until acquaintance and Charmverse co-founder Alex Poon contacted her with the right opportunity that she knew it was time to don the Community Manager title. Alex assured her that her ability to form relationships with all types of people was more important than the ability to bridge ETH and the more technical skills that could be taught. As she was already looking for a career change, seeing the stars align with this opportunity was just what she needed to onboard into the Charmverse team a month after that connection.

According to Xandra, these traits are necessary to form lasting bonds and fulfilling partnerships between a web of communities: the patience to keep showing up, an eagerness to understand new technology, and excitement for connecting people together. As we explored the depths of DAO and community tooling and how she builds community at Charmverse, it became abundantly clear she was meant for this type of work.

Opening up the DAOist Toolbox

Upon opening Pandora’s box of DAO operations tools in web3, where crypto collides with productivity, analytics, and CRMs, fly all sorts of objects with APIs and SDKs, often landing in a sea of Gitbook repositories to wade through.

The magic of helping dozens of community managers and founders navigate through Charmverse is in its simplicity. When a team creates a product that, in a lot of ways, explains itself, the community builder is then able to use a natural bend toward creativity to connect members together.

Surprise and Delight

Charmverse houses some of the most trusted communities from all over the web3 landscape, from PleasrDAO and Safe to Optimism, and when asked how Xandra manages to keep all these DAOs together in the Charmverse Discord, she attributes this success to a loving team. 

See, the work of a community builder is often lonesome, but as Xandra shares, “help from the team goes both ways. I’ll come to the devs with a question, and the answer is filled with tech jargon, so I have them break it down into plain English. And they’ll coach me too when I need help understanding a question from a member.” Having a particular team member as a sounding board for social media posts is also a strength she leans into the team. For a community builder at any experience level, it’s all about using the team’s resources wisely.

When asked how the DAO space has surprised her over the past year and a half, she mentioned how inspiring it’s been to see people continue to be so dedicated to a mission. Even if they aren’t necessarily being paid for all the meaningful work they put into the community. The people she works with day in and out move forward with passion and genuine participation. Noting particularly that a surge in Japanese communities have begun adopting the operations tool. This has led to a feature request for in-app language translation and to hearing how those communities might uniquely utilize the tool.

One of the main drivers of participation in DAO tools as of 2023 has been an increasing number of RetroPGF or Retroactive Public Goods Funding. Xandra discussed the rising interest in Gitcoin Grants, particularly since the massively funded Optimism Grants Council has chosen Charmverse as its operations platform. Noting that, in her observation, “Charmverse Grant's builder has been a game changer for teams, saving them from having to go to VC funding right away. This Fall, teams like Safe and Taiko have been able to track milestones in cycles to reward the hard work happening in their communities.”

Working Within the Web of Community

For someone constantly surrounded by DAO contributors and core teams, Xandra has had the privilege of getting to know many personalities in the ecosystem. When asked what kind of person is best suited for DAOs and onchain communities, from her perspective, these teams need a balance of:

• Dedication: a sense of urgency for the mission at hand
• Self-Motivation: ready to participate and get things moving
• Emotionally Invested: not necessarily financially invested, but passionate
• Spare Time: even a few hours a week is a godsend for community operations or engagement

While participation is not a requirement for becoming a member of a community, it’s important to understand that for the long-term sustainability of a mission, more than a few shepherds are required. As stated earlier, while these contributors may not get paid or paid well enough, Xandra added an insightful note that “many contributors, especially in the US, are afraid to leave their 9-5 since they have to work in multiple DAOs to make ends meet and won’t always have benefits.” While some are more funded with enough capital to afford full-time roles, benefits, and higher compensation, this is the ebb and flow of onchain communities.

The ______ of Connection

While the term community is often thrown around very loosely in the web3 space, even to its detriment at times, connectors like Xandra work daily to mend these problems. Getting into the nuts and bolts of building the externally facing matters of community outcomes and internal cohesion is just as important today as ever. So, in our conversation, we dug deep into what it’s like to build many communities at once while keeping it all together.

The Internals of it All

One often overlooked aspect of being a community builder is the skills needed to coordinate internal team connections. Recently, the Charmverse team had their first off-site team trip to Lisbon, Portugal. While teams are generally happy to build remotely, this distributed nature prevents us from noticing how someone works in person and how they react to team-building situations, even outside of conferences and industry events.

An insight that Xandra had to offer for remote teams is to make a priority out of these intimate internal events. She considers herself the “mother hen” of the team and, in doing so, she planned multiple outings and dinners and got everyone together for what amounted to a very productive time. Now, did they solve world peace? No. But by getting together in person, they were able to understand each other more clearly, and that is an immense power in itself that will inevitably power the whole team forward until next time.

Engagement, Engagement, Engagement

Whether it's always helpful or not, one of community managers' top concerns is ensuring we are properly engaging with members at all levels. The breadth of this process is a manner of omnipresence to allow operators to catch content wherever they may be browsing at any moment in their journey.

Here are a few bases that Xandra covers at Charmverse:

• Charm School: an ongoing collection of educational articles to guide community builders on Charmverse
• Blogs: a collection of product feature updates, helpful articles, interviews with builders, and education roundups
• Newsletter: bi-weekly newsletter cross-posted to social media, including Twitter/X and LinkedIn
• User Manual: a Notion database filled with necessary materials to get a DAO operator up and running

It’s really special to feel like you’ve made an impact. Recently, “one of our power users, Wasabi, messaged me to say they loved one of the Charm School pieces and had bookmarked it,” Xandra added how it “made my day to know that there’s even one person who appreciates and loved it and will probably share it with other people as a supporter.”

Each content stream is part of a balanced and more comprehensive approach to written content that feeds into one another. They offer opportunities for curiosity and questions to be answered, potentially leading to new problems to solve for members as they discover the platform.

Looking Ahead and Closing Out

As we all attempt to look ahead at what a product or community needs, one thing top of mind for many is the ability to utilize AI and product enhancements more effectively to get creative with our builders.

Closing out our conversation, Xandra noted that she plans to continue working to bring the best education and resources to community peers using Charmverse in the year ahead. With the advancements in AI, it’s possible more communities will use chat boxes to communicate with members, complete onboarding tasks, and more, resulting in more fluid creative power for connectors like herself.

Find Xandra online at https://twitter.com/XandraDozet

Visit Charmverse for DAO and community operations tools at https://charmverse.io/