Send us a text

This week on Sidecar Sync, Mallory Mejias and Amith Nagarajan unpack one of the most explosive weeks in AI so far—from the stunning debut of Google's Gemini 3 to the jaw-dropping image generation of Nano Banana Pro, and the best-in-class coding chops of Claude Opus 4.5. They also dive into Mistral 3 and DeepSeek 3.2, two powerful open-weight alternatives making waves in the AI space. With OpenAI allegedly declaring a Code Red in response, the co-hosts break down what this all means for the future of associations and how to stay agile amid rapid innovation.

🤖 Join the AI Mastermind: https://sidecar.ai/association-ai-mastermind

📕 Download the New 3rd Edition of ‘Ascend’:
https://sidecar.ai/ai

📅 Join the pre-registration list for digitalNow 2026:
https://digitalnow.sidecar.ai/digitalnow2026

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

DeepSeek 3.2 ➔ https://github.com/deepseek-ai
Gemini 3 ➔ https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini
Claude Opus 4.5 ➔ https://claude.ai
Nano Banana Pro ➔ https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini#image-generation
Mistral 3 ➔ https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-3
ChatGPT ➔ https://openai.com/chatgpt

🎀 Use code AIPOD50 for $50 off your Association AI Professional (AAiP) certification at https://sidecar.ai/aaip

🚀 Help Us Grow Our Reach - Share With a Friend or Colleague!

👍 Like & Subscribe!
https://x.com/sidecarglobal
https://www.youtube.com/@SidecarSync
https://sidecar.ai/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space. Mallory co-hosts and produces the Sidecar Sync podcast, where she delves into the latest trends in AI and technology, translating them into actionable insights.

https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias

Send us a text

When an association with 85 years of food science knowledge decides to launch an AI product, what happens? In this episode, Mallory Mejias sits down with Jay Gilbert, Director of Scientific Programs and Product Development at the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), to explore how IFT built CoDeveloper, an AI-powered platform designed to streamline R&D in food innovation. Jay shares how his journey from student member to staff gave him a unique edge in shaping tech that’s both useful and trusted. You’ll hear how IFT gained board buy-in, brought staff along for the ride, and maintained privacy for proprietary food formulas — all while keeping their mission at the center. If you're curious about launching member-focused AI tools, this conversation is packed with practical insights and inspiration.

Jay is the Director of Scientific Programs & Product Development at the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). A longtime member who joined staff in 2017, he has supported everything from special interest groups to IFT’s annual scientific program. Today, he leads new product development and serves as product lead for CoDeveloper – Powered by IFT, an AI-enabled platform that brings IFT’s 85+ years of science and research directly into the R&D process to accelerate food product development.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaytgilbert/
https://www.ift.org/

🤖 Join the AI Mastermind: https://sidecar.ai/association-ai-mastermind

📕 Download the New 3rd Edition of ‘Ascend’:
https://sidecar.ai/ai

🚀 Help Us Grow Our Reach - Share With a Friend or Colleague!

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

CoDeveloper ➔ https://codeveloper.ift.org
ChatGPT ➔ https://chat.openai.com

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub for Teams:
https://sidecar.ai/lh4t

🚀 Help Us Grow Our Reach - Share With a Friend or Colleague!

👍 Like & Subscribe!
https://x.com/sidecarglobal
https://www.youtube.com/@SidecarSync
https://sidecar.ai/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space. Mallory co-hosts and produces the Sidecar Sync podcast, where she delves into the latest trends in AI and technology, translating them into actionable insights.

https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias

Send us a text

In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Mallory Mejias and Amith Nagarajan dive into three high-octane AI developments reshaping the landscape of innovation. They kick things off with Claude Haiku 4.5, Anthropic’s blazing-fast small model offering near-frontier performance at a fraction of the cost. Then, the hosts explore diffusion models—an architectural shake-up that could revolutionize how AI generates language. Finally, they venture into orbit with Google’s ambitious Project Suncatcher, a plan to power machine learning with solar satellites in space. Along the way, they unpack what these advancements mean for associations and why now is the time to set bold, moonshot goals.

🤖 Join the AI Mastermind: https://sidecar.ai/association-ai-mastermind

📕 Download the New 3rd Edition of ‘Ascend’:
https://sidecar.ai/ai

📅 Join the pre-registration list for digitalNow 2026:
https://digitalnow.sidecar.ai/digitalnow2026

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Claude Haiku 4.5 ➔ https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-haiku-4-5
Comet AI Browser ➔ https://www.perplexity.ai
Claude for Chrome ➔ https://claude.ai/chrome
Inception Labs ➔ https://www.inceptionlabs.ai/#our-models
NotebookLM ➔ https://notebooklm.google
Project Suncatcher ➔ https://shorturl.at/sVh5B

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub for Teams:
https://sidecar.ai/lh4t

🚀 Help Us Grow Our Reach - Share With a Friend or Colleague!

👍 Like & Subscribe!
https://x.com/sidecarglobal
https://www.youtube.com/@SidecarSync
https://sidecar.ai/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space. Mallory co-hosts and produces the Sidecar Sync podcast, where she delves into the latest trends in AI and technology, translating them into actionable insights.

https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias

Send us a text

Live from digitalNow 2025 in Chicago, this special edition of Sidecar Sync brings together voices from across the association world, sharing real-life examples of AI implementation, leadership innovation, and strategic transformation. Mallory Mejias speaks with leaders from the American Paint Horse Association, the Missouri State Teachers Association, AGRiP, and more to uncover how associations are moving from ideation to execution with AI. Whether it’s slashing support calls with AI chatbots or overhauling strategic planning using the St. Louis Arch as a metaphor, this episode is packed with inspiration, practical takeaways, and a healthy dose of in-person energy.

🤖 Join the AI Mastermind: https://sidecar.ai/association-ai-mastermind

📕 Download the New 3rd Edition of ‘Ascend’:
https://sidecar.ai/ai

📅 Join the pre-registration list for digitalNow 2026:
https://digitalnow.sidecar.ai/digitalnow2026

🔧 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Betty Bot ➔ https://bettybot.ai
Sidecar AI Learning Hub ➔ https://learn.sidecar.ai

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub for Teams:
https://sidecar.ai/lh4t

🚀 Help Us Grow Our Reach - Share With a Friend or Colleague!

👍 Like & Subscribe!
https://x.com/sidecarglobal
https://www.youtube.com/@SidecarSync
https://sidecar.ai/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space. Mallory co-hosts and produces the Sidecar Sync podcast, where she delves into the latest trends in AI and technology, translating them into actionable insights.

https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias

Send us a text

In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Mallory Mejias is joined by marine biologist and behavioral researcher Dr. Denise Herzing for a one-of-a-kind conversation about dolphins, data, and deep learning. Dr. Herzing shares insights from her 40-year study of Atlantic spotted dolphins and how that lifetime of underwater research is now powering DolphinGemma—an open-source large language model trained on dolphin vocalizations. The two discuss what it means to label meaning in animal communication, how AI is finally catching up to the natural world, and why collaboration across disciplines is essential to understanding both language and intelligence—human or otherwise.

Dr. Denise Herzing is the Founder and Research Director of the Wild Dolphin Project, leading nearly four decades of groundbreaking research on Atlantic spotted dolphins in the Bahamas. She holds degrees in Marine Zoology and Behavioral Biology (B.S., M.A., Ph.D.) and serves as an Affiliate Assistant Professor at Florida Atlantic University. A Guggenheim and Explorers Club Fellow, Dr. Herzing has advised the Lifeboat Foundation and American Cetacean Society and sits on the board of Schoolyard Films. Her work has been featured in National Geographic, BBC, PBS, Discovery, and her TED2013 talk. She is the author of Dolphin Diaries and co-editor of Dolphin Communication and Cognition.

🤖 Join the AI Mastermind: https://sidecar.ai/association-ai-mastermind

📕 Download ‘Ascend 3rd Edition: Unlocking the Power of AI for Associations’ for FREE
https://sidecar.ai/ai

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Wild Dolphin Project ➔ https://www.wilddolphinproject.org
DolphinGemma ➔ https://deepmind.google/models/gemma/dolphingemma/
TIME AI 100 ➔ https://shorturl.at/OUQ2h
Google DeepMind ➔ https://deepmind.google

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub for Teams:
https://sidecar.ai/lh4t

🚀 Help Us Grow Our Reach - Share With a Friend or Colleague!

👍 Like & Subscribe!
https://x.com/sidecarglobal
https://www.youtube.com/@SidecarSync
https://sidecar.ai/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space. Mallory co-hosts and produces the Sidecar Sync podcast, where she delves into the latest trends in AI and technology, translating them into actionable insights.

https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias

Send us a text

In this solo episode, Mallory Mejias takes the reins to unveil what digitalNow 2025 reveals about the current state of AI in associations—spoiler alert: we're officially in the "AI adolescence" phase. From cultural adoption to trust-building, she unpacks the four key insights her analysis surfaced from the event’s full schedule. But that’s not all—Mallory goes off-script to live-build a conference session recommender app on air, showing how even non-technical folks can leverage AI for rapid, practical innovation. Whether you're attending digitalNow or just AI-curious, this episode is packed with strategic takeaways and an extra dose of hands-on fun.

🤖 Join the AI Mastermind: https://sidecar.ai/association-ai-mastermind

📕 Download ‘Ascend 2nd Edition: Unlocking the Power of AI for Associations’ for FREE
https://sidecar.ai/ai

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Claude ➔ https://claude.ai
Groq ➔ https://groq.com
ChatGPT ➔ https://chat.openai.com
digitalNow Conference Companion App (Bottom of Page) ➔ https://sidecar.ai/events

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub for Teams:
https://sidecar.ai/lh4t

🚀 Help Us Grow Our Reach - Share With a Friend or Colleague!

👍 Like & Subscribe!
https://x.com/sidecarglobal
https://www.youtube.com/@SidecarSync
https://sidecar.ai/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space. Mallory co-hosts and produces the Sidecar Sync podcast, where she delves into the latest trends in AI and technology, translating them into actionable insights.

https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias

Send us a text

In this episode, Mallory Mejias sits down with UX and content strategy expert Bryan Kelly to explore how the longevity economy—a massive shift toward a population dominated by adults over 50—is transforming digital experiences. Bryan dives into why designing for older adults is less about age and more about behaviors, values, and life stage. He breaks down the common UX mistakes organizations make and shares practical strategies for building trust, clarity, and confidence into every member interaction. The duo also discusses the powerful, and sometimes dangerous, intersection of AI and age bias, and how associations can prepare for a more nuanced, age-inclusive future. Bryan will also be keynoting at digitalNow 2025, so consider this your sneak preview!

Bryan Kelly is a UX and content strategy leader focused on creating digital experiences that work better for adults over 50. He’s delivered measurable results for brands like McAfee, Premera Blue Cross, EXPRESS, Home Depot, Orange Theory Fitness, and FedEx by transforming user insights into revenue-driving features. Blending product strategy, UX expertise, and business acumen, Bryan helps organizations better serve this experienced and influential audience.

More About Bryan Kelly:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryankellynow/

🤖 Join the AI Mastermind: https://sidecar.ai/association-ai-mastermind

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Claude ➔ https://claude.ai
ChatGPT ➔ https://chat.openai.com
MIT AgeLab ➔ https://agelab.mit.edu
Stanford Center on Longevity ➔ https://longevity.stanford.edu

Curious if your content is ageist?
Download: Identifying Age Bias: A Framework for Age-Inclusive Content Design

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub for Teams:
https://sidecar.ai/lh4t

🚀 Help Us Grow Our Reach - Share With a Friend or Colleague!

👍 Like & Subscribe!
https://x.com/sidecarglobal
https://www.youtube.com/@SidecarSync
https://sidecar.ai/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space. Mallory co-hosts and produces the Sidecar Sync podcast, where she delves into the latest trends in AI and technology, translating them into actionable insights.

https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias

Send us a text

In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Mallory Mejias and Amith Nagarajan dive into three seemingly distinct but tightly connected topics: a groundbreaking robotic hand from China that could redefine how machines interact with our world, the growing movement of mandatory AI literacy training sweeping through corporations and governments, and new data from Anthropic showing a widening economic divide in AI adoption. They explore what these trends mean for the future of work, equity, and innovation—and why every association leader should be paying close attention.

🤖 Join the AI Mastermind: https://sidecar.ai/association-ai-mastermind

📕 Download ‘Ascend 2nd Edition: Unlocking the Power of AI for Associations’ for FREE
https://sidecar.ai/ai

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
ChatGPT ➔ https://openai.com/chatgpt
Claude ➔ https://claude.ai
Suno ➔ https://suno.com
NotebookLM ➔ https://notebooklm.google
Google Gemini Nano ➔ https://ai.google/discover/gemini
Anthropic Economic Index ➔ https://shorturl.at/23b42
Citi AI mandate ➔ https://shorturl.at/DLXZY
Wuji Tech Demo ➔ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXVV-oErD8s

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub for Teams:
https://sidecar.ai/lh4t

🚀 Help Us Grow Our Reach - Share With a Friend or Colleague!

👍 Like & Subscribe!
https://x.com/sidecarglobal
https://www.youtube.com/@SidecarSync
https://sidecar.ai/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space. Mallory co-hosts and produces the Sidecar Sync podcast, where she delves into the latest trends in AI and technology, translating them into actionable insights.

https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias