Helping Associations Thrive in the Age of AI

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Edition, recorded live at ASAE's Marketing, Membership, Communications + Tech Conference, guest host Sharon Pare of HighRoad Solutions welcomes Erica Salm Rench, chief marketing officer at Sidecar, for a conversation about helping associations navigate the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence. Erica shares why AI presents a unique opportunity for associations to compete more effectively, discusses the importance of educating staff and aligning AI initiatives with organizational strategy, and offers practical guidance on building AI literacy, selecting the right tools, and adapting to the growing influence of AI-powered search. Check out the video podcast here: https://youtu.be/3tyPPP_4yXU   Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.   Transcript Sharon Pare: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partners Series, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Sharon Pare, partnerships director at High Road Solutions, a HubSpot agency, co-host of Rethink podcast, and your host of this series throughout the year. This episode today is sponsored by Sidecar.  We're recording today from ASAE's MMCT conference in Washington, DC, where association professionals from across the industry are gathering to share ideas, build connections, and explore what's next for the community. I've got the perfect expert with me today, Erica Salm Rench. She's really leading the association industry in all things AI. A lot of you might have heard of AAIP, their certification program. They're part of the Blue Cypress family. But before we kick all of that off [00:01:00] and get into all of those details, I know you're celebrating a special day today. I know we're here at MMCT. We'll get to that in a minute, but you're celebrating your 15-year wedding anniversary today.  Erica Salm Rench: I am. Oh, yeah, that was a fun fact- Yeah ... that we shared right before. Yeah. So I will see my husband later this evening, which is great. He'll get some time with me. It seems like a fair trade-off, though, to be at MMCT. This is so fun.  Sharon Pare: Yes. And then I have another thing. You were talking to me a little bit about your hotel. You know how when you travel a lot, I know for work. And everyone has their ritual when they get back to the hotel and what they do. Is there any things that you need to do? I'll give you an example. So for me, when I'm traveling alone in a hotel room, I always have to sleep with Friends on. Do you have something like that you do?  Erica Salm Rench: You and I are two peas in a pod. I usually have Friends on in the background, or I always make sure I have snacks with me in my purse, because I feel like a lot of times the hotel snacks, they're not as healthy or nutritious as you [00:02:00] want them. Yeah. So I always have nuts packed or protein bars in my purse, and then I lay out my snacks so that I have something in the morning to wake up to. Sharon Pare: Okay. Yeah. I love it. Okay, so I wanna talk about MMCT, but before we get into it, you did win an award this year with AWTC, the Technology Leadership Award. Tell me a little bit about that and what that award meant for you. I was there. I was really excited to see you win that. Erica gives a great speech, by the way. She's a great speaker.  Erica Salm Rench: Thank you. I was so humbled by it. It was so exciting. I was just overwhelmed by the award, and Rebecca and Carrie and Jill, and the amazing women at AWTC. They do such a good job of bringing women together and empowering them, and they truly filled a gap in the association space. It is [00:03:00] so cool to be a part of that movement, and I think it was just really emphasized last night at the AWTC Happy Hour. Sharon Pare: I was just going to ask-  Erica Salm Rench: Oh my ... Sharon Pare: What did you think about that?  Erica Salm Rench: You literally could barely move in that room, because everyone is so supportive of what they're doing, and women in technology need to be celebrated. I think about my daughter, and I mentioned her too in my award acceptance speech because- She wants to be a rocket scientist. She wants to send my little one to the moon. She wants to be an astronaut.  Sharon Pare: I am all about that.  Erica Salm Rench: And has there ever been a better time to be a rocket scientist for a lady, right? Come on, let's elevate these women who wanna be in STEM.  Sharon Pare: That's amazing.  Erica Salm Rench: So I just, it just was all that together, all of those feelings together, and it was an amazing moment. I was, again, so humbled, so thrilled, and it was just great to celebrate with all the 15 other women who [00:04:00] won awards as well. So what a great, what a fabulous night.  Sharon Pare: So tell us how you stumbled into the association world. Nobody has a, "I wanna grow up and I wanna be in associations." I, I don't know. Maybe you did. Yeah. But did you stumble into it? How did you get here, and how did you say, "Hey, I'm gonna support the association community"?  Erica Salm Rench: Yeah, so it, like you said, it happened a little bit by accident. So I guess I'll go, like, all the way to the origin story. When I was getting my MBA at Tulane, Mithun Nagarajan, who was the founder of Aptify and sold Aptify to Community Brands, it was when he was still at Aptify, and he came to speak to my class about what they're doing at Aptify, how they help associations, and how their purpose was to help associations fulfill their purposes. And that just was so cool to me. At the time, I was actually working for Tulane as well, so in nonprofit land, and I was just, I was moved by that, and I went to speak with him after he spoke to our class, [00:05:00] and so we, that was our first connection. And then fast-forward after I graduated with my MBA from Tulane, I went to run a big team in a marketing agency. We had the 1,200 clients, just the largest agency in the Gulf South, at least at the time. And my team did all of them, executed on all the digital services, so like everything on like SEO, repurposing content, paid online ads, web dev, you name it. And when Ameet and I then reconnected, like four years after I was at the agency, and he was sharing with me this opportunity to use AI to make some of the things that like essentially we were doing at the agency so much more efficient and effective and personalized, it was, it seemed like a no-brainer. I was like, "This is where the world is going." So that was almost nine years ago, and I was with Rasa for about seven years, and now I've been with Sidecar for going on a couple years. So I've been with the Blue Cypress family of companies for almost nine, [00:06:00] and this community's amazing. Everyone's so kind and warm, and I really do feel like I'm making an impact teaching people about AI, and that's what we do at Sidecar as well. So, you know, the rest is history. It felt like the right fit.  Sharon Pare: And that's exactly what that award, I think, it really shows as an example of what you're doing for the community. So thank you so much for all the women in technology.  Erica Salm Rench: Oh my gosh.  Sharon Pare: And what I do wanna mention really quick is Amit and the Blue Cypress family of brands. And one thing that I know for 2030 is they wanna make sure these associations are going to be in that same realm of Fortune 500 companies when it comes to technology. Yeah, yeah. And one of the things that I think about all the time, and asked this on some of the podcasts, the Associations Now team knows that I've asked this before, but- Not controversially, but traditionally, associations are a little bit behind. Sure. And now with AI coming up to speed and associations starting to finally get into that world, do you think that associations [00:07:00] finally have this opportunity to be at the same starting line as their for-profit counterparts? What do you think?  Sharon Pare: I know you think that we're finally there. We are not the dinosaurs that they say we are.  Erica Salm Rench: Absolutely. There has never been a more leveled playing field than there is right now. Great. This technology can amplify the work that almost anyone does, and being part of the movement where we teach people how to harness it and how to leverage it is so incredible. Like you said, Blue Cypress's purpose is to make association groups as powerful as the Fortune 500 by 2030, and the part that Sidecar plays in that is, is like this chapter one for them, right? We're helping to educate people. So there are so many people that say, "I don't know where to begin. We want to, quote, unquote, 'do AI,' but where do I start?" Education is a great place to start because you [00:08:00] can speak the same language as your team, you can figure out which tools and which puzzle pieces fit in to help you amplify your mission and your purpose, because it's not just about AI for AI's sake, right? It's about figuring out which of these tools can be harnessed to push forward your organization, and that's why education is such a great foundation for all of that. Sharon Pare: And I think MMCT is obviously the perfect place for it. Yeah. So let's talk about that a little bit. I know you had a session yesterday. Yeah. I want you to talk a little bit about your session, but are there any other moments and themes that you're hearing on the floor that are starting to become signals for where our industry is moving? Erica Salm Rench: Absolutely, yeah. No, I'm so glad you brought that up, because throughout my session, I always like to do a lot of live polling, like hand-raising, "Where are you? Where's your organization?" So I always start with, "How frequently do you use AI?" Starting with, "I've never touched the stuff," to, "I- I've dabbled," to weekly, to daily, to, [00:09:00] "I'm using agents regularly to help me complete tasks." And this year, I always do that, do that poll in the beginning of my sessions. This year, the number of hands that were raised for, "I use it daily and I'm building agents and automations," was overwhelming compared to the year before, and the number of people who raised their hand for just once a week was much less than it was, like I said, a year ago. So that was really cool to see. And in my sessions, depending on the content that I'm speaking about, I do like to talk about tools and show people practical applications in action. That's my favorite thing to do, 'cause I think that a thing you can put in your suitcase and take home for Monday morning to bring to back to your organization. So we did a lot of that. And I showed probably 20, 30 tools or talked about that many. And then I did something new this year where I talked about Okay, now we take these tools, we have them all in the back of our heads for what [00:10:00] is possible and what the capabilities are, because they're changing so fast. But you just need to know, generally speaking, what is out there and what's possible. So I said to keep that in the back of your heads. Now we're gonna talk about strategy. Pull up your strategic plan and figure out where these puzzle pieces plug in and how you can demonstrate to your board, to your leadership, to your peers, that these tools are actually working to push forward your missions and moving the metrics. So that was a fun moment. It was a new piece of content for me, but I think it was, I think it was impactful for folks.  Sharon Pare: There was an article I read recently about what you called leadership malpractice, and I thought that was really interesting, 'cause usually you'll hear that in the doctor's office if there's, you know- Sure something bad happening around what they are doing. Tell me a little bit about that as it relates to AI and associations. Absolutely. So it is a provocative term.  Erica Salm Rench: It is. I'll give you that.  Sharon Pare: No, because I think that you're right. You told me. But it could be doing a [00:11:00] disservice to the association because of this. Yeah. So I want you to tell us a little bit about that also.  Erica Salm Rench: Absolutely. Well, at Sidecar, we believe that educating your people and developing your people is a core part of pushing your organization forward, right? And in this time of such rapid change, it's unbelievable how quickly things are moving here. And in this time of rapid change, if you're not educating your people and bringing them forward on this technological journey, you're doing them a disservice. Yeah. Both with regard to inside of your organization and what's possible from inside of your organization, but also with regard to what they do afterwards, right? Realistically speaking, not everyone is a Reggie Henry, where you're doing amazing things for 30 years at one organization. They're gonna go out into the world, and you have to elevate your people, and the way to do that is through education and teaching them about everything that's happening.  Sharon Pare: So you just mentioned about how AI is moving really super quickly, and again, most association professionals are not technology. It's [00:12:00] right that MMC added the technology part to kind of marry everything here. So how do you translate fast-moving developments into something a non-technical leader can actually act on this week?  Erica Salm Rench: Yeah. It's never been a better time to be someone who's interested in technology, but maybe not classifying themselves as a technologist, because the barrier between imagination and actualization has never been smaller, right? You could ideate on something and go open your computer and build it for less than a cup of coffee, right? I built a dashboard for folks in the session yesterday, and it's just, I'm not a coder, right? And so it's so amazing that you can harness these tools and see them in action and experiment, and I always say the best- Place to start with AI is just doing it. You can't really learn it well until you try it, and I don't like to talk about tools usually until I've tried them myself. [00:13:00] And the barriers to entry to experiment with these things have never been smaller, which is so cool.  Sharon Pare: Let's take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor Sidecar is on a mission to demystify AI for association and nonprofit professionals through education, events, and community. At the heart of Sidecar is the AI Learning Hub, a platform of self-paced courses built specifically for the association world and available for both individuals and entire teams. The Hub is also home to the AAIP, the Association AI Professional certification, a foundational credential that validates both the knowledge and the practical skills association pros need to lead AI initiatives with role-based learning pathways, also offering CAE credits. Beyond the Hub, Sidecar produces a wealth of free and ongoing resources, including the Sidecar Sync podcast, Sidecar [00:14:00] Scoop newsletter, a use case library of short real-world AI examples, and a vibrant online community. Plus executive programming for senior leaders who want to go deeper. And every fall, Sidecar hosts Digital Now, the premier conference for association leaders focused on the future of leadership, technology, and innovation. Whether you're just AI curious or ready to certify your whole team, Sidecar is where the association industry goes to learn AI. So you've been a big believer in bringing the whole staff along rather than just one AI person. What actually changes when an entire team is actually working on this together?  Erica Salm Rench: Yeah, you can speak a common language. I always say taking AI courses together, almost like a book club, can be so impactful because even if it's asynchronous, like a book club, you're reading the book separately, then you come together to talk about it. And we've seen some of our clients do that, and it's [00:15:00] had such an amazing impact because then they can share ideas, and there's less resistance because everyone knows what each other are talking about. Even if you haven't done the things yourself, you still know about them, and you can speak the common language. You have the same foundation. And so oftentimes we hear and we believe that AI isn't necessarily a tech problem, because the tech has never been easier to use. It's, it can be a culture thing, right? You have to encourage people and lead them and make the playing field leveled  Sharon Pare: So there's a ton of AI education out there. What does it get wrong when it's built for a general audience and it's not something that's association specific AI?  Erica Salm Rench: There's so much out there, right? I get seven newsletters on AI, and you see the LinkedIn influencer version of what AI is, and all the, like you said, the TikToks and the tweets, and it's just overwhelming. So that's [00:16:00] why I think CAR is such a great solution for folks because it truly is the intersection of AI for associations, and all of the content we've built in our learning portal is specifically geared toward association use cases like event planning and membership growth and retention, and what member organizations need from their AI tools as opposed to just general AI learning. And I think that there's such an opportunity there for people to explore how this stuff can impact their specifically association lives and not just general learning.  Sharon Pare: So outside of the learning, you think a lot about how people discover and trust information now, including how tools like ChatGPT and Claude decide what to cite. What should associations understand about staying visible and credible in that world?  Erica Salm Rench: Oh, that's such a great question, and that makes me think about my agency days. So we did a lot of traditional SEO. So some of the foundational pieces of what SEO was, like, still apply. If you need to optimize [00:17:00] your image metadata, you need to optimize your page metadata, you need to tag your images, like, all of these data points that you have the opportunity to optimize so that you're telling the internet what your information is about still hold. They're still important. It's different because the, it's going into a much more aggregated AI response, but there's still a lot of opportunities to leverage some of the traditional components of SEO. That being said, there's much more now to think about, and there are a lot of trends to stay on top of in terms of what these LLMs are training on, and it ch- it changes very frequently. So I think that you bring up such a good point because all these associations, they still wanna be in the rich AI answers that are presented when someone is querying Google or Bing or what have you. So I'd say, first of all, stay educated. Keep on top of it because it is changing fast. But also educate your marketing teams that it's not just about the traditional SEO components anymore. You have [00:18:00] to expand beyond what, what your current knowledge is  Sharon Pare: So I have a sidecar question  Erica Salm Rench: for you Yeah, sure  Sharon Pare: But out of the ChatGPT, the Claude, Grok, Perplexity, Gemini, do you have... There's so many. Some people use it all for different cases. Yeah. Sometimes it's work, sometimes it's personal, sometimes it's, "My nutrition, I need a personal trainer." Yeah. Do you have one that you particularly... Well, what is your, which one's your go-to?  Erica Salm Rench: So we're... Oh, I'm a Claude girl now, and we're mostly a Claude shop, mostly because of the, the co-working feature. It's just- This is no plug to Claude This is no... Yes, I, Claude did not pay me for this particular, no. But  Sharon Pare: maybe they will. Erica Salm Rench: May- Maybe they will. No, but the co- If you haven't experimented with Claude Cowork, which you need to work in their desktop app to experiment with, truly go, go work on that, because you can have it talk to your file structure, update files. It eliminates the copy/paste, and then it's also so amazing. The projects are so amazing for context. So go play with that. And then I still have not yet found [00:19:00] that- A better tool for image generation or text to image editing or video gen than, than our friend Gemini  Sharon Pare: Nano Banana?  Erica Salm Rench: Nano Banana. And Veo, Veo 3.1, I think they're at for the video. It's just unbelievable. The audio capabilities, the video quality, it's cinematic quality from a prompt. I play, it's, my kids and I play around with it sometimes too. It's, we made a tap dancing raccoon with Popsicles the other day, and it's, it's fun too, in addition to being, like, incredibly useful.  Sharon Pare: Of course. Yeah. I always think about how much, you've seen the Will Smith eating spaghetti video, right? Yeah. And just the-  Erica Salm Rench: Wait, no. Wait, no. I said yeah. I haven't seen the Will Smith  Sharon Pare: eating spaghetti. Oh, you haven't. No. Tell us about that. Well, that's a question, and I don't know if our production team has seen it, but- Yeah ... if our listeners now, if you go and look at when AI first started generating this video of Will Smith eating spaghetti and what it looks like- Yeah versus what it looks like today, and it's only been such a short amount of time. Sure. Yeah. You need a, you need to Google [00:20:00] Gemini it because- Yeah ... it is just incredible to see how far we've gone- So far ... in just a few months. Yes. Look that it up, this video.  Erica Salm Rench: Yeah, I have to. That's one of the things I did in my session too when I talked about imagery. I sh- pulled up an image of what imagery used to be a year ago, people with 19 fingers, and the words were all misspelled, and now it is just unbelievable with the written content within images, the human faces and just how clear and realistic and lifelike they are, and then being able to surgically edit those images just with a prompt makes life, like for a non-graphic designer like myself, just opens up the world of possibilities. Sharon Pare: So everyone worries about AI shrinking teams. We've seen it even recently in headlines. A lot of these big companies are doing these mass layoffs because they say that AI is going to really start taking over jobs, but you frame it a little bit differently for associations. Yeah. So can we dig into that a little bit more and why [00:21:00] with these associations staff shouldn't worry? Erica Salm Rench: We see it as more of an amplification of the work that you're currently doing, and this quote is not my own, but it is something to think about, and it goes back to the leadership malpractice phrasing. But- AI won't necessarily replace people, but people who know AI will replace people who don't, because employers are gonna look for people who can do much more with the minutes and hours that they have, and that's just gonna be the reality of the future. Sharon Pare: Yeah. All right. We're gonna move into our fast five. Oh, sure. All right. Okay. Okay, so there's no wrong answers, so say whatever comes to mind. It can be- Yeah ... personal, it can be professional. Okay. So what's a book, podcast, or account every association pro, I guess this one's a professional one, but if you wanna drop in a personal one, too. Yeah. What is one that they should follow right now?  Erica Salm Rench: I am a sucker for business books. I love Good to Great [00:22:00] by Jim Collins. I, I also love Rockefeller Habits. I feel like they both lay such an amazing foundation for building and growing organizations.  Sharon Pare: What is a tool you couldn't live without right now, and it doesn't have to be AI? Erica Salm Rench: A tool I couldn't live without... Oh, okay. It's the, it is the most simplistic technology in the world, but I'm gonna tell everyone to go sign up for an account right away. It's called Follow Up Then, followupthen.com. And Google has a similar sort of like Boomerang, and they're tooling it more.  Sharon Pare: One more time. This is more for me.  Erica Salm Rench: Followupthen.com. Okay. So what it is, instead of having a to-do list that represents things that you might need to do in three months or five months or once a year, you send an email to followupthen.com-  Sharon Pare: Okay ...  Erica Salm Rench: and it emails you at the precise moment that you need to do the task. Oh. And then if it's something like you need to snooze it, let's say it's something you do once a year, you do the thing that year, and then you hi- hit one year, like snooze button, basically. Oh. Grandma's birthday. Okay. It's [00:23:00] gonna send you an email on Grandma's birthday. You gotta give her a call, and then you snooze it. Or that once a month report that you need to send to whoever, you snooze that once a month. And that means that your to-do list only is the top three things that you need to actually get done that day, and everything else, you know that it's gonna be presented to you at the precise moment you need to do it. I'm obs- it changed my life.  Sharon Pare: That's amazing because I, I talk to Siri. I don't want Siri to hear this, but I'm like, "Hi, Siri.  Erica Salm Rench: Can you send me a reminder to do this?" And then I never get the reminder, and I'm like, "Okay." It's not a time-bound reminder. We are not gonna get it from Siri. Follow- Yeah ... upthen.com will do that for you. Now, they also don't pay me, but I think they should. Followupthen.com, if you're listening, I deserve a commission. Thank you.  Sharon Pare: Something about the association world outsiders totally misunderstand. Now that you've been here for a decade, we've known each other for a decade, what do you think most people, when you're talking to them about, "Oh, yeah, I work in association," what do you think they misunderstand usually about the association world? I think the people just don't [00:24:00] know that-  Erica Salm Rench: The association world exists, yes ... when you start then giving them examples like American Heart Association, American Marketing Association, something clicks. But I don't think people know about what sort of thought goes into making a membership organization tick or a community tick, and then you have to get the light bulbs to turn on. And I think something else that people don't, that associations don't realize is just, like, how valuable their audiences are to certain people. Obviously, I'm a sponsor of this conference. Sidecar is a sponsor of this conference. Being in front of this audience is so incredibly valuable, and I think that association professionals tend to undervalue, like, how valuable their audiences are to the outside world, and that's maybe why the outside world doesn't understand associations as much. Sharon Pare: Yep. And it's funny you mentioned American Heart Association, 'cause I know that I wouldn't walk into a dental office that didn't have that seal of ADA approved. People just forget about some of those things that- That are part of your health ... part of your health. Uh-huh. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Best piece  Erica Salm Rench: of advice you ever got.[00:25:00]  Ooh, to be a lifelong learner.  Sharon Pare: Yeah. So this is truly the role for you.  Erica Salm Rench: Yes. And yeah, I love teaching people things. I love learning. I feel, I a- I tell my kids all the time, I remember this poster in my 1990s elementary school classroom, knowledge is power. Knowledge is really power. If you educate yourself and stay on top of things and can speak about the hot topics, that's, that can elevate you so much and, and just really help you figure out your own path in life. Sharon Pare: So if you weren't doing this though, what would you be doing?  Erica Salm Rench: Oh, I don't ... Oh, okay, fine. You really wanna know like my dream job? Yes. Travel food show host.  Sharon Pare: Oh my gosh.  Erica Salm Rench: That's my dream job.  Sharon Pare: I would love to watch that.  Erica Salm Rench: Yeah, wouldn't that be s- And eat, and eat, go to places, and talk to people about it, and teach people about food. Sharon Pare: So where's the one place you haven't traveled to yet to try the food that you wanna try?  Erica Salm Rench: I really wanna go to Japan.  Sharon Pare: Oh, yes.  Erica Salm Rench: Really. H- Have you been? Five times. Five times. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I wanna go to Japan so badly. I [00:26:00] love, I think the culture is so interesting, and I'm a big sushi lover. I wanna eat sushi from its birthplace, of course. Well,  Erica,  Sharon Pare: this has been  Erica Salm Rench: everything.  Sharon Pare: Thank you  Erica Salm Rench: so much for sharing- Thank  Sharon Pare: you ... uh, your expertise, everything here at MMCT, everything on the AI front. I really appreciate you being here, sharing your time with us. Of course. Can you tell everybody where we can find you?  Erica Salm Rench: Yeah. So please visit sidecar.ai, and we are your one-stop shop for all things AI learning for professional and trade associations. Our cornerstone offering is our AI learning hub, which you can buy at the teams level or at the individual level. And we also have like 200 level education through our Mastermind program. And come to the Digital Now Conference. Yes. It's going to be in DC October 25th through 28th. It's gonna be in DC. It is. Yes, we go- That's exciting ... yeah, we go back and forth- Yeah ... between Chicago and DC, and we're, it's a DC year. We're gonna be at Hilton Arlington Rosslyn the Key. We would love to have you join us. Come sign up. [00:27:00] Digitalnow.sidecar.ai.  Sharon Pare: Awesome. Thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents. Thank you so much, Erica, for being here. Erica Salm Rench: Happy to be here. Sharon Pare:  Join us each month as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals, discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today, and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy, the US, and the world. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And for more information on topics that impact the association space, visit Associations NOW online at associationsnow.com.