Navigating AI Seas: Leadership, Lab, and Crowd | 89

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In this episode, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias dive into the world of AI agents, hackathons, and the secret cyborgs in your office. Fresh off a high-intensity AI agent-building retreat, Amith shares how association leaders—regardless of technical skill—can use open-source tools to build powerful, secure AI assistants. Then, the duo explores a framework by AI researcher Ethan Mollick to explain why organizations are lagging in AI gains despite skyrocketing individual productivity. They unpack the importance of visionary leadership, encouraging experimentation within your team (and your members), and building your own “lab” to prototype the future—even with limited resources. This episode invites you to chart your course and navigate AI’s uncharted waters with confidence and creativity.
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🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Member Junction ➡ https://memberjunction.org
Claude ➡ https://claude.ai
GitHub Copilot ➡ https://github.com/features/copilot
ChatGPT ➡ https://chat.openai.com

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

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

🎉 Thank you to our sponsor https://meetbetty.ai/

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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

Chapters

1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. Member Junction’s New Agent Framework (00:03:11)

3. AI’s Impact on Developer Productivity (00:07:00)

4. Exploring Ethan Mollick’s Leadership-Lab-Crowd Framework (00:09:35)

5. Bullets and Canonballs (00:16:27)

6. Secret Cyborgs: The Hidden AI Users (00:26:01)

7. Encouraging Innovation Through Incentives (00:28:16)

8. Building Your Organization’s AI Lab (00:39:51)

9. Competing with Yourself: Innovating Before You're Disrupted (00:48:19)