114: Working With People in Tezos | A Conversation With Islam

This week on TezTalks Radio, host Brandon Langston is joined by Islam, Community Manager at Trilitech, for a thoughtful conversation about responsibility, judgment, and the emotional reality of working closely with people.

Before entering the Tezos ecosystem, Islam seriously considered a career in medicine. That interest in care, responsibility, and human impact never disappeared. It simply found a different place to live. In this episode, we explore how those values translate into community work, where decisions matter, clarity is essential, and there is rarely a script to follow.

 Our guest is Islam, a community manager at Trilitech whose work sits at the intersection of people, communication, and responsibility across the Tezos ecosystem.

 In this episode, we explore:

• What drew Islam toward medicine and what stayed with him after choosing a different path
• How responsibility shows up in community roles without formal authority
• The parallels between medical clarity and careful communication
• How judgment is formed when rules alone are not enough
• What community experiments reveal, even when they fall short
• The emotional weight of working closely with people at scale
• Lessons drawn from long-term loyalty and expectation
• What good engagement actually looks like from the community side
• One misconception about community-facing roles that causes the most friction
• What Islam hopes his work contributes to over time, beyond metrics

Chapters

• 0:11 Meet Islam And His Path
• 1:34 Leaving Medicine For People Work
• 4:59 Holistic Community Strategy And Tone
• 7:52 Money Stakes And De‑Escalation
• 8:41 Responsibility Without Authority
• 10:58 Clarity, Jargon, And The Breakfast Club
• 14:03 Imperfect Experiments And Tezos Culture
• 16:22 Emotional Load And Boundaries
• 19:47 Redefining Engagement Beyond Vanity Metrics
• 22:24 What Community Roles Really Are
• 25:26 Toward Self‑Sufficient, Cross‑Discipline Community
• 27:47 Closing And Where To Find More

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:11

Welcome back to TED Talks Radio. I'm joined today by Islam from Trulitech. Islam worked as a community manager at Trulitech is work as it's close to people, conversations, expectations, moments of friction, and moments of clarity. Before this path, Islam seriously considered medicine. That interest in people and responsibility never really went away. It found a different outlet. This conversation focuses on how you work with people at scale, how judgment gets formed, and what responsibility looks like when clarity really matters. Islam, welcome to Test Talks Radio. Hello, hello.

SPEAKER_00: 0:56

Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm just traveling from place to place, and my laptop is very hard to locate. So yeah, I'm going to be joining in through my phone. And uh just a heads up that I think this might be the first time that my docs name is is mentioned on kind of more web 3 channels, which is very interesting. But I think a lot of people know me as either Ion or Islam or whatever it is that flows there both. As long as they're talking to me, I'm happy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34

Before blockchain, you seriously considered medicine. When you think back to that period, what part of working with people felt most real to you at that time?

SPEAKER_00: 1:47

That's a very good question, as always. Um I think initially, just going back even further, uh initially growing up, uh, I might have mentioned this a bunch of times before, but I've always been told I have the gift to kind of talk myself in and out of situations. And I've always been told that I am good with people, right? And obviously, growing up with these skills, they're not really seen as skills, they're seen as kind of what I would consider politician skills, right? They're they're seen as like almost negative things that you can do. Uh, and I never really figured out that they could be used for work, or there is an avenue where I could use these skills for good and kind of like help people uh in a space. And I think ultimately what what I've seen over the past few years is that okay, Web3 has an abundance of this role in the first place, but it's something that I think the rest of the world hasn't fully caught up to. Uh, and what I mean by that is now we're seeing a lot of like web two companies jump in and say, oh my God, you know, community is the new buzzword. We need a community manager for this, we need a community manager for that. Uh and they they ultimately they use that role as a way to just have a glorified social media manager with a bunch more kind of roles added to their sort of thing. But anyway, going back to medicine, yeah, I've I've always wanted to help people. I never knew how, or I never knew in what capacity. And I think, you know, growing up liking biology and chemistry was the thing that made the most sense to me. Uh, I will also add to that um kind of a more personal note is that I've always liked the idea of surgery. I've always had steady hands, I've always liked that part of medicine. And I think ultimately the the crossroads that I reached is that, okay, I'm quite rebellious in nature, and I don't think it makes sense for me to sit down uh and learn about every part of the human body and every process in the human body if I want to do surgery. And I think that part kind of helped me uh move further away from medicine because yeah, like it's again ultimately just rebellious nature of why do I need to know how the foot works if I want to become a brain surgeon? Uh and the counter-argument is, you know, you you need to know everything because everything is connected somehow. But if you're doing surgery, there's at least 10 other doctors that have met this patient before you. Um, so I'm very much still against the idea of learning everything. Uh but anyway, yeah, ended up getting into F3 and looks like my future for now. But I think ultimately, you know, if if in 10 years' time I sit down and I'm like, man, I should have done medicine and I should have become a doctor. I will do it in 10 years' time. I will do it in 20 if I have to. Like, I genuinely just don't want to live with any regrets. And I think right now what what looks good to me is what I'm doing, and what I'm enjoying the most is what I'm doing. So this is where we are for at least the next, yeah, let's say, decades.

SPEAKER_01: 4:48

So when you chose, as you said, a very different environment. What carried over from that mindset?

SPEAKER_00: 4:59

Um, I think ultimately the the biggest one and the one that I've been kind of personally contemplating the most is the the holistic nature of what you're taught um in kind of the the road leading to medicine, right? Uh what is the basis of my like entire, let's say, community strategy and and how I conduct myself, even in day-to-day life, is trying to keep things more personalized, trying to keep things more real.

unknown: 5:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 5:30

And I think where a lot of people kind of fail in terms of community management is trying to come up with blanket answers for practically every every issue, and also trying to kind of treat everything uh as a standalone um rather than something that is connected to 10 other conversations prior to that, right? Uh and the the holistic nature side of things is even more crucial when it comes to Tesos and like the Tezos community, because uh I've said this before and I will say it again. There are a lot of community members that know so much more than I do. Uh and I would say probably more often than not, I am learning from these community members. And I think if I had um a much larger ego, it wouldn't go down as well. But I think ultimately just treating treating things in a in a connected and personal manner rather than rather than just being um kind of more general with things is is the one thing that I learned the most. And I think also um messaging and how how things are being portrayed and how things are being said and tone especially, uh, I think these are are really incredible, really important and and incredible things in terms of value for the people, right? So like you can you can be in the right, but say it in a way that makes you wrong. And you could also be wrong and say it in a way that makes you right. Right. And I think with that being said, especially when it comes to a very delicate um community where money is always involved, right? Whether we like it or not. There's always gonna be money on the line. There's people that lost money, people that are making money, people that aren't all right. I think I'm back. Yeah, sorry. One of the cons of being on your phone is if you get a phone call, everything collapses. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's okay. That's something carried over from spaces. Uh, but yeah, going back to it, I think when money's involved in anything, it becomes a hundred times more delicate and a hundred times harder to navigate. And I think prefacing a lot of these conversations and understanding the root of the problems that that come up during community management and like understanding that, okay, if we just think that whoever you're you're speaking to has a substantial bag in in Tesla or in whatever it is that they're that they're buying, right? Uh and understanding that sometimes maybe they just need the reassurance, sometimes they just need to be pointed in the right direction, sometimes they just need more information on the information that you're providing, then yeah, that that kind of clears everything up and and helps me conduct my myself in a much more understanding way.

SPEAKER_01: 8:41

Community work often comes with responsibility, but not always authority. How do you think about that balance?

SPEAKER_00: 8:51

Yeah, I think that's the the kind of basis behind any community work, right? The the fact that you're almost this middleman between what people consider staff and what people consider community members. I think the the perfect balance there is to be someone that is there with the people that are dealing with these issues, right? Someone who's using the tools in the ecosystem, someone who's involved in the ecosystem, someone who's actually, let's say, minting an object, uh buying an object, um, trying Apple Farm, using the uranium.io website, someone who's actually seeing these pain points firsthand, uh, and understanding that, you know, it's better to be honest about an issue that you cannot personally change rather than promising someone something you can't do. And I think, yeah, like ultimately, at least on my side, over the last year and and two months now at Trilitech, I've had to involve myself in conversations, in discussions, in kind of groups where I otherwise wouldn't have been, just so I can get a better understanding and like solve problems for people. And I think the the issue that a lot of people run into is that they're usually gatekeeped from these conversations that happen behind the scenes, which kind of leads to the lack of authority. Uh, thankfully, you know, I think me having a proactive nature by default and trying to kind of solve problems and almost getting that dopamine hit as much as I can just from from solving something that um that other people are dealing with helps me with that. But yeah, at the end of the day, like it's a very standard um standard part of being a community manager, I think, is you know, you can't have it both ways, right? You can't be the hands-on personal community community manager that's like dealing with the same issues that everyone else is dealing with and also have the authority to change them, because if you did, then there wouldn't be these issues in the first place.

SPEAKER_01: 10:54

In medicine, clarity can be critical. Do you see parallels in how you approach communication now?

SPEAKER_00: 11:02

100%. Uh, I think ultimately, if you go to the doctor's office and they, you know, they they come back to you with a diagnosis that you cannot understand, even though it's in English, then that's just gonna make you more nervous and more kind of uh more worried about the about your personal health, right? And I I think I don't want to say dumbing things down, but I think it's the best way to capture what I'm trying to get to here is that like a lot of issues can be overcomplicated and they can be, you know, kind of given an answer that wouldn't make sense in layman's terms. And this is something that, you know, we've been implementing on our side for a while now, and something that I've been pushing towards the social team for for quite a while, is like we need to have something that um not only is kind of enticing to people that don't know the the inner wordings and kind of the inside jokes that we have as a community, but something that just works for everyone, right? So like making language easier, if there's a way to clarify things in a way that doesn't make the other person so confused that they're just like, okay, I really don't want to deal with this anymore, um, then we'll do it. Right. And I think, you know, with with crypto communities as a whole, there's always gonna be the words that are strictly unique to the ecosystem and to the blockchain. For example, we have bakers, you know, other chains might have different names for different things. But when I first joined, didn't fully connect the dots that like, you know, bakers were were validators, were like the people that are running, running the chain on the back end, right? People that are validating everything, making sure everything's going smoothly. Um, which, you know, kind of led to the idea of the breakfast club, right? So, okay, let's, you know, double down and make sure that people are doing um, make make sure people are are people are participating in these events that are, you know, quite normal outside of Web3. So just a very simple breakfast club, come in, get coffee, get pastries. And connecting that with the idea of, oh, we have bakers on the on the chain. And one of the most common jokes that we get at these breakfast clubs is like, oh, did you, you know, Tezos bakers make these treats? And that's when the conversation opens up. Right. So oversimplifying, I think, is a very big one without losing um substance, right? So you can't also like dumb it down to the point that it just doesn't make sense at all. Um, and again, like a lot of the community members that I've spoken to are much smarter than probably I'll ever be. And I think keeping that in mind um and finding a way to make it not only human but easier to understand is is always going to be the goal.

SPEAKER_01: 13:57

You have seen community experiments come and go, including moments like Tezpol. When you look back on things like that, what do they reveal about a community, even when they're imperfect?

SPEAKER_00: 14:12

That is a very, very good question. Um I will say certain instances like that, like for example, um about a day ago, I personally accidentally sent the wrong NFT for the Tesmas campaign. It was supposed to be, let's say, day fours, and I sent day fives, and vice versa. Right. And I think one of the replies we got when we clarified that was I love that that's so Tezos, right? And like thinking about that, you can look at it two different ways, right? You can look at that and just be like, okay, we mess up so many times that we are seen, you know, when we when we do mess up, they're like, oh, it's standard. The other way you can look at it is like, okay, it's kind of part of the charm that we have that makes us who we are as as an ecosystem, as a blockchain. Um, for example, the the Tespo thing, um I although unfortunate, right? And I've said this on spaces before, although unfortunate, I really think it provided this opportunity for us to come closer together as a community, for us to kind of almost cement some of these grassroots um interactions, right? And it you know didn't go as planned. It was a slight hiccup, but it's one of those things that people still talk about and in a very light-hearted fashion. No one's sitting down saying, oh my God, you know, Tez poll ruined my life and I'll never want to talk about it again. People are saying, you know, it's one of those funny instances that we had on Tezos. And I, you know, I I would I would have really hoped we doubled down on it, and I still think we have we have some time to do that. But I think, again, going back to like the inside joke side of things, it's one of those things that like everyone can have a Web3 community, everyone can have a community based uh on or around a certain blockchain. These kind of more personal experiences are something that you can't fabricate and you you can't come up with. And I think that's the the important part about them.

SPEAKER_01: 16:17

Working closely with people also means absorbing a lot of emotion. How do you manage that over time?

SPEAKER_00: 16:26

It's not easy, man. Uh short answer, it's not easy. Uh long answer is uh compartmentalizing in a way that doesn't affect your personal life, which um if you tuned into the space, I think on Tuesday, you would know that it's still a work in progress for me. I think ultimately realizing what you can do and what you can't do is is gonna be what separates um kind of you from overestimating or underestimating what you can do. Right. And what I mean by that is there are gonna be people, again, that have a lot of money involved in whatever it is they're doing, or a lot of emotion. It doesn't have to be financial. There's a lot of people that put in a lot of anything into what they're doing. Uh and you know, I'm not gonna lie and tell you that it's like something that's completely separate from everything I do. It's something that definitely has an impact on what I do and how fast I want to do things and how much I want to do things. Right. I think what it boils down to is trying to separate the personal from professionals, but it's not something that I can do at 100% right now. Um, and obviously working quite closely with people, having a job that practically relies on you having conversations with people and interacting with them will mean that if you have a long day at work, then chances are your social battery is quite depleted for the rest of the day. Um, and I think another thing that that not a lot of people understand and might be kind of hard to fathom is that you know, I I'm contracted or obligated to work from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. The amount of times I've actually stuck to that schedule have been very, very minuscule over the last three years of me working in this space. Right? Like this, for example, is not necessarily work work, but it's you know, at 6 30 p.m. I I'm not gonna say no to it because it's outside of these hours. And I think finding a balance that maybe doesn't separate both, but kind of allows both to run concurrently um with a more, let's say, objective way of treating them rather than yeah, like having negative emotions day to day during work and then positive after. Like, why not just let them run hand in hand and work on kind of your personal growth, your your personal emotions outside of all of this? Uh and almost blanketing both under kind of one um self-improvement mindset, which is very tough. You know, it's quite simple in in theory, but quite hard in practice.

SPEAKER_01: 19:16

So we're getting there. Sounds like a footballer making that crucial goal at the last moment, a lot of pressure. And then the emotional release when it doesn't happen. Now, from your side of the table, what does good engagement actually look like?

SPEAKER_00: 19:42

Okay, this is gonna be a controversial one, I think, for sure. My personal uh opinion on numbers and metrics is very, very different from what any corporate company's numbers would would be like. My whole thing is like, okay. I've seen enough in in Web3 and in general just to understand what exactly is real. Right. So like we can right now we can make one wallet turn into a hundred different wallets and do a hundred different tasks and we can boast about X amount of monthly active users, you know, and we can fabricate everything, right? And it's not something that only the, you know, the corporate kind of Illuminati figures can do. No, it's like something you can just do right now on your laptop with practically, yeah, like close to zero in funding. I think ultimately what it what it comes down to for me at least is when someone gives you a review or a testimonial about a certain thing that is going on in the ecosystem, a certain product, a certain campaign, a certain whatever it is that we're doing. When someone comes to you and says, hey, this is great, I would, you know, I would hope we do more of those. Or, you know, I really enjoyed the UI of the uranium website, or I really enjoyed the Christmas campaign, or I really enjoyed the Halloween campaign you guys did. Getting those testimonials is the only real metric for me, because if it's something that was good enough for you to talk about uh and share feedback about, then it must have been good for you, right? And I think ultimately getting to a point where everyone is sharing feedback, whether good or bad. Uh, and if we can gauge, let's say, instead of looking at how many people are participating in campaigns, it's like how many people shared feedback. Uh, that would be a very good metric for us to measure. I will also kind of preface all of this by saying, I suck at completing feedback forms. I don't like that idea, I don't like surveys, I don't like any of that, right? But um kind of being a bit hypocritical here, but if people can like if people are sharing their thoughts on something, that means they care enough to talk about it. And whether it's good or bad doesn't really matter. But as long as they're talking about it to us, then that means if they're bad, then we can change them and fix them and put them in the right direction. But if they're great, then you know that's as good of a of a metric as you can get for a campaign.

SPEAKER_01: 22:15

If more people understood one thing about community-facing roles, what would you want it to be?

SPEAKER_00: 22:24

Oh how much time do we have?

SPEAKER_01: 22:28

A couple minutes.

SPEAKER_00: 22:30

Okay, perfect. Uh, I think there's two main things I want to cover here, even though you asked for one thing. One is kind of on the negative, and one is on the positive. On the negative side of things is that community managers are not social media managers, they're not marketing managers, or they're they're not all of these other roles that you want to throw in in terms of community. And funnily enough, it's maybe maybe instead of saying they're not those things, I would say maybe they're not just those things.

unknown: 23:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 23:01

And what I mean by that is like, again, job listings, for example, for community managers, they're all saying, you know, manage TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and all those things. And you're like, okay, that's a social media manager. But even when, like when I joined TwitterTech, my my job role was quite um quite clearly defined as to like what the role is about and what the community manager does. And it was almost strictly within the community channels. But I am jumping in on the Twitter side of things, I'm jumping in, for example, the Tesmas campaign, where the the entirety of that website was me and AI kind of working hand in hand to build something that actually works, that brings people together. Uh, and I think with that being said, giving community managers the right freedom and the right direction is ultimately what it what it boils down to. Uh and in terms of freedom, I mean allowing them to be involved in helping others understand, sorry, exactly how things should be portrayed. Um, and one of my biggest like fears is being tone-deaf, right? So, like I don't want to be in a position where we come up with this amazing campaign idea, and the way we package it is completely tone-deaf to what the community wants or what the community needs, or how we can involve the community there. So that's that's the biggest one for me. I think ultimately it's that involvement that kind of strengthens the team internally, but also helps with external facing campaigns. Um, and you know, that's kind of where I'm pushing for and kind of the direction I'm taking things, where like I want to be involved as much as possible. It's sometimes at the at the risk of kind of being overworked and spreading myself too thin. But getting to a point where we know exactly what's going on, even if we're not working kind of hands-on and directly on it, just to make sure that A, we can solve problems for people that are dealing with these things, but B, we can make sure that it caters exactly to what what the community and what the audience is looking for. Um, that would be the kind of perfect mix.

SPEAKER_01: 25:26

Looking ahead, not in terms of plans, but people, what do you hope your work contributes to over time?

SPEAKER_00: 25:36

Um, I've always said one specific thing about my role is like if I can help one person with a very pressing matter in their life or in their, let's say, Web3 life, then that's about as good as a day that as I can get in terms of working with people. Right. And what I mean by that is like if I can get to a position where a problem is being solved day in, day out, um, for people that are dealing with these problems, even if it's something as simple as like, I don't know where to find the docs for this, please send me the link. Having that, um, maybe even selfishly, because you know, I kind of enjoy the dopamine hit of problem solving. I think that's what would be um classified as like a perfect day, and like moving forward, that's what I want things to look like. But ultimately, I think what we have, especially at Tezos, is something almost self-sufficient, right? Like these community avenues existed way before they were formalized. The the Discord was made by community members that eventually were passed on to people that were kind of um that were told to make sure it's running smoothly and running the way that it should be running. And I think what I want to get to is almost this point of extreme self-sufficiency where community members can solve problems for other community members. But also, with that being said, I want it to be a place where it's just not strictly about solving problems, right? So, like I want community members to chat with other community members, and we see a lot of that right now, which is amazing. But I think it's quite strongly localized within the art community on Tezos. I would like it to have kind of a much broader reach and to have almost this like more cohesive community between if you're you know, between the devs, between the artists, between the the general community members. Um and I think that's always gonna be the goal.

SPEAKER_01: 27:47

Well, thank you again to Islam for taking the time. You can find uh more long form conversations like this on the Tezos Commons YouTube channel. We'll be back soon. Thanks for joining. Thank you so much for having me.