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In this episode of Sidecar Sync, co-hosts Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias dive deep into the cutting edge of AI-generated audio and video. Mallory demos the stunning new ElevenLabs V3 voice engine and the lifelike hand gestures of HeyGen's Avatar 4, while Amith shares behind-the-scenes insights from a recent hackathon focused on building agentic software. The pair also unpack Apple’s eyebrow-raising research paper, “The Illusion of Thinking,” and debate whether AI models are truly reasoning—or just pattern-matching very well. Whether you're building AI learning hubs or just wondering when Siri will finally get it together, this episode’s for you.

🎥 Video Demo of ElevenLabs V3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv_IoWIO5Ek

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🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
ElevenLabs V3 ➞ https://www.elevenlabs.io
HeyGen Avatar 4 ➞ https://www.heygen.com
Claude ➞ https://claude.ai
OpenAI Voice Mode ➞ https://openai.com/chatgpt
Synthesia ➞ https://www.synthesia.io

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Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress https://BlueCypress.io, 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.

📣 Follow Amith:
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Mallory Mejias is the Manager at Sidecar, and she's 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.

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In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Mallory Mejias sits down with Jason Marchese, Learning Content Specialist at Sidecar, to explore the exciting frontier of AI-generated interactive web apps. From solving everyday meal planning problems to analyzing U.S. migration trends, they demonstrate how anyone—even non-technical folks—can build useful tools using Claude and ChatGPT. The conversation then shifts to a groundbreaking internal project: the Learning Content Agent (LCA), a dynamic AI-powered system that streamlines and customizes educational content at scale. Whether you're curious about AI's impact on personal productivity or ready to revolutionize your association’s learning programs, this episode is packed with inspiration and practical insights.

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

💡 Find out more about Sidecar’s CESSE Partnership - https://shorturl.at/LpEYb

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub and get your Association AI Professional (AAiP) certification:
https://learn.sidecar.ai

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

📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
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🛠 AI Tools & Resources in This Episode:

Claude Dinner App ➡ https://shorturl.at/BQzBq
ChatGPT Dinner App ➡ https://shorturl.at/2ccPX
Census App ➡ https://shorturl.at/ehNKF
ChatGPT ➡ https://chat.openai.com
Gamma ➡ https://gamma.app
ElevenLabs ➡ https://elevenlabs.io
Claude Code Overview ➡ https://shorturl.at/EKlHa

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Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress https://BlueCypress.io, 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.

📣 Follow Amith:
https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is the Manager at Sidecar, and she's 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.

📣 Follow Mallory:
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In this electric episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack the latest AI announcements from Google I/O and the highly anticipated Claude 4 release from Anthropic. They explore what Google's Deep Think means for AI reasoning, debate the creative and ethical implications of video generation tools like Veo 3 and Flow, and rave about Claude's new voice mode. Plus, they reflect on the seismic shift AI is bringing to content, coding, and SEO—alongside some AC/DC-fueled Chicago memories and a preview of the upcoming digitalNow conference.

"If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more." - Erik Shinseki
https://shorturl.at/39XvA

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

💡 Find out more about Sidecar’s CESSE Partnership - https://shorturl.at/LpEYb

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub and get your Association AI Professional (AAiP) certification:
https://learn.sidecar.ai

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

🎉 Thank you to our sponsor https://memberjunction.com/

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Claude 4 Opus ➡ https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-4-opus
Claude Voice Mode ➡ https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-voice-mode
Gemini 2.5 Pro ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini
Gemini Ultra ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini
Gemini Flash ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini
Google Veo 3 ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/veo
Google Image 4 ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/image
Flow by Google ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/flow

📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
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🎉 More from Today’s Sponsors:
Member Junction https://memberjunction.com/

🚀 Sidecar on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

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

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress https://BlueCypress.io, 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.

📣 Follow Amith:
https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is the Manager at Sidecar, and she's 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.

📣 Follow Mallory:
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This week, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias dive deep into Google's groundbreaking AI breakthrough—AlphaEvolve. In their first-ever single-topic episode, the duo unpacks why this agent’s ability to autonomously invent and refine algorithms marks a pivotal moment in AI history. From shattering a 56-year-old math record to its potential to reshape how associations tackle "unsolvable" problems, Amith and Mallory explore what AlphaEvolve means for science, business, and the association world. Plus, they discuss how associations can remain relevant in the face of rapid AI advancement—even when the tech seems impossibly complex.

📽 Supporting video by https://www.youtube.com/@Pourya_Kordi:
https://youtu.be/PcjhXA2bsh0?si=WuQeA3BuDAAROHIp

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

💡 Find out more about Sidecar’s CESSE Partnership - https://shorturl.at/LpEYb

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub and get your Association AI Professional (AAiP) certification:
https://learn.sidecar.ai

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

📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
https://digitalnow.sidecar.ai/

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
AlphaEvolve ➡ https://shorturl.at/3vzXm
Gemini ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini
Claude by Anthropic ➡ https://www.anthropic.com/index/claude
Perplexity AI ➡ https://www.perplexity.ai/
Betty ➡ https://www.meetbetty.ai/
Isomorphic Labs ➡ https://www.isomorphiclabs.com/

📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
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🎉 More from Today’s Sponsors:
Member Junction https://memberjunction.com/

🚀 Sidecar on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

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

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress https://BlueCypress.io, 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.

📣 Follow Amith:
https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is the Manager at Sidecar, and she's 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.

📣 Follow Mallory:
https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias

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This week on Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias dive deep into two cutting-edge developments in the AI world. First up is the mind-bending concept of "sleep time compute"—how LLMs might learn and improve during their downtime, transforming into smarter, faster assistants overnight. Then, the duo breaks down OpenAI's $3 billion acquisition of Windsurf, the booming arena of AI coding tools, and what it means for developers and associations alike. From persistent memory to prototype-ready AI partners, this episode is packed with insights for both techies and the tech-curious.

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

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub and get your Association AI Professional (AAiP) certification:
https://learn.sidecar.ai

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

📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
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🎉 More from Today’s Sponsors:
CDS Global https://www.cds-global.com/
VideoRequest https://videorequest.io/

AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Claude Code ➡ https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/overview
Claude Desktop ➡ https://claude.ai/download
Windsurf ➡ https://windsurf.ai
GitHub Copilot ➡ https://github.com/features/copilot
Cursor ➡ https://www.cursor.so
OpenAI Codex ➡ https://openai.com/blog/openai-codex
ChatGPT ➡ https://chat.openai.com
Gemini by Google ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini

📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
https://digitalnow.sidecar.ai/

🎉 More from Today’s Sponsors:
Member Junction https://memberjunction.com/

🚀 Sidecar on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

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

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress https://BlueCypress.io, 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.

📣 Follow Amith:
https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is the Manager at Sidecar, and she's 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.

📣 Follow Mallory:
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In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias take on one of the most pivotal—and often overlooked—challenges in association innovation: getting your board on board with AI. Drawing from Amith's personal boardroom experience and Mallory’s deep dive into board psychology, they break down how to navigate internal politics, craft compelling AI use cases, and turn skeptical board members into innovation allies. From emotional storytelling to small pilot wins, this episode is your roadmap to aligning AI ambition with boardroom approval.

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub and get your Association AI Professional (AAiP) certification:
https://learn.sidecar.ai

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

📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
https://digitalnow.sidecar.ai/

🎉 More from Today’s Sponsors:
CDS Global https://www.cds-global.com/
VideoRequest https://videorequest.io/

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

ChatGPT ➡ https://openai.com/chatgpt
Claude ➡ https://www.anthropic.com
HeyGen ➡ https://www.heygen.com
NotebookLM ➡ https://notebooklm.google

Chapters:

00:00 - Welcome to Sidecar Sync
01:00 - Setting the Stage: Why Board Buy-In Matters
06:55 - What Motivates Board Decisions in Associations?
10:15 - Volunteerism, Ego, and Career Goals
13:55 - Navigating Volunteerism, Legacy, and Tradition
25:37 - How Can You Build an Irresistible AI Use Case?
27:21 - Selecting the Right Pilot Project
32:59 - The Role of Demos and Emotional Buy-In
37:19 - Is an AI Data Platform the Right Starting Point?
40:34 - What’s the Pa

📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
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🎉 More from Today’s Sponsors:
Member Junction https://memberjunction.com/

🚀 Sidecar on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

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

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress https://BlueCypress.io, 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.

📣 Follow Amith:
https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is the Manager at Sidecar, and she's 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.

📣 Follow Mallory:
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Send us a text

This week on Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias explore Wells Fargo’s virtual assistant “Fargo” and how it stacks up against Klarna’s AI tool from a year ago. With 250 million fully automated interactions and measurable impact on customer engagement and bias reduction, Fargo offers a powerful case study in applied AI. Amith reflects on what’s now possible for associations, why a narrow pilot project is a smart first move, and how “human in the loop” isn’t just a safety net—it’s strategic. The duo also breaks down Microsoft’s new Phi-4 reasoning models, which pack PhD-level performance into incredibly compact packages that can run on your phone. If you're wondering where the AI trend line is heading, this one’s for you.

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub and get your Association AI Professional (AAiP) certification:
https://learn.sidecar.ai

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

📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
https://digitalnow.sidecar.ai/

🎉 More from Today’s Sponsors:
CDS Global: https://www.cds-global.com/
VideoRequest: https://videorequest.io/

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Fargo ➡ https://sites.wf.com/fargo/
Klarna AI Assistant ➡ https://www.klarna.com
Microsoft Phi-4 Reasoning Models ➡ https://huggingface.co/microsoft

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction
03:47 - Meet Fargo: Wells Fargo’s AI Assistant
05:59 - Comparing Fargo with Klarna’s Assistant
08:57 - The State of AI Agents in Associations
13:05 - Event Support: A Smart Use Case for AI
15:00 - Human-in-the-Loop: Not Optional, But Essential
23:44 - Private AI: Local vs. Cloud Deployment
26:46 -

📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
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🎉 More from Today’s Sponsors:
Member Junction https://memberjunction.com/

🚀 Sidecar on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

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

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress https://BlueCypress.io, 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.

📣 Follow Amith:
https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is the Manager at Sidecar, and she's 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.

📣 Follow Mallory:
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In this episode of Sidecar Sync, hosts Mallory Mejias and Amith Nagarajan take a deep dive into Model Context Protocol (MCP), a revolutionary standard making it dramatically easier for AI to interact with data, tools, and systems—no code required. Mallory shares her personal setup experience with Claude for desktop, walking through a live example of using MCP to automate file organization. Amith expands on why MCP is a game-changer for association leaders, how it enables business users to go from idea to execution quickly, and why data liberation is the missing piece for many organizations. The duo also breaks down new insights from Anthropic’s Economic Index, which reveals that AI is currently used far more for augmenting human effort than full automation. It’s an episode rich with practical insights, technical clarity, and a peek into the fast-arriving future of AI in the workplace.

🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub and get your Association AI Professional (AAiP) certification:
https://learn.sidecar.ai

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

📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
https://digitalnow.sidecar.ai/

🎉 More from Today’s Sponsors:
CDS Global https://www.cds-global.com/
VideoRequest https://videorequest.io/

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
MCP Quickstart Guide ➡ https://modelcontextprotocol.io/quickstart/user
Claude for Desktop ➡ https://www.anthropic.com
Zapier ➡ https://zapier.com
Cursor ➡ https://www.cursor.so

Chapters:
00:00 - Welcome to Sidecar Sync and What’s Ahead
01:02 - Catching Up: Spring Break and Autonomous Driving
05:02 - What Is Model Context Protocol (MCP)?
07:06 - How MCP Works: Mallory’s Simple Explanation
08:11 - Step-by-Step: Setting Up Claude Desktop With MCP
12:42 - Live Demo: Moving Files Using Claude and MCP
18:01 - Why Associations Should Care About MCP
26:44 - MCP and the Role of AI Data Platforms
33:07 - What Is the Anthropic Economic Index?
35:59 -

📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
https://digitalnow.sidecar.ai/

🎉 More from Today’s Sponsors:
Member Junction https://memberjunction.com/

🚀 Sidecar on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global/

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

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress https://BlueCypress.io, 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.

📣 Follow Amith:
https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is the Manager at Sidecar, and she's 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.

📣 Follow Mallory:
https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias