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You know Rotunda. You love Rotunda. You’ve clipped that perfect congressional soundbite at 2 AM for your morning memo.

But what if instead of logging in and searching, you could just… ask?

Meet Rotunda MCP: Rotunda, But Make It Conversational

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI models securely connect to and interact with external tools or data sources in real time – basically a fancy way of saying “your AI assistant can now talk directly to Rotunda.”

Think of it like giving ChatGPT, Claude or Raptor AI a backstage pass to every congressional hearing.

What This Actually Means for You:

Using Rotunda can now be as simple as:

– “Hey ChatGPT, what did they say about AI regulation in yesterday’s hearing?”
– Gets instant answer with citations

The Cool Stuff You Can Do:

– Natural language deep searches – Run multiple searches, pull the best bits and synthesize
– Instant alert setup – “Tell me when anyone mentions cryptocurrency” → Done.
– Zero-click clipping – “Get me that clip where Senator X grilled the witness” → Here’s your link.
– Schedule checking – “What hearings are happening tomorrow?” → Full list, ready to go.
– Cross-hearing analysis – “Compare what they said about chips last month vs. this week” → Actually possible now.

Use Cases:

“Show me every time rare earths were mentioned in the last 30 days”

“Alert me when anyone discusses Supreme Court ethics reform”

 “What’s on the schedule for Senate Finance next week?”

 “Get me a clip of that exchange on AI safety”

Why This Is a Big Deal:

We all love Rotunda’s search. But sometimes you’re in the middle of drafting a memo, or prepping for a call, or explaining something to your boss, and you just need an answer — not a treasure hunt.

MCP means Rotunda’s entire database of transcripts, alerts, clips, and schedules is now accessible through conversational AI. It’s like having a congressional monitoring expert sitting next to your AI assistant.

The Technical Bit (For the Nerds):

MCP is an open protocol that lets AI models securely connect to external tools. We built Rotunda MCP so your AI can search our transcript database, manage your alert queries (we call them “swarms” because they’re always buzzing), generate video clips, and check hearing schedules — all without you leaving your AI chat.

The Not-Technical Bit (For Everyone Else):

Your AI can now read congressional transcripts.

Try It Out:

If you’re using Claude or another MCP-compatible AI, you can plug in Rotunda MCP and start asking questions. It’s like giving your already-powerful AI a direct line to Capitol Hill.

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Questions we’ve gotten:

“Does this replace the Rotunda platform?”
 Nope! It’s an add-on. You can still use Rotunda the normal way. MCP just gives you another option.

“Do I need to be a developer?”
 Nope! If you can use ChatGPT, you can use this.

“Will this make me look cool in meetings?”
 We can’t make promises, but being able to instantly pull up what Congress said 20 minutes ago doesn’t hurt.

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Learn more: https://rotunda.bullpenstrategygroup.com/features/mcp

Yesterday, I explored how many organizations are falling into what I call the “early-stage trap” of Al adoption-implementing new technology while clinging to old operational frameworks. Like the factory owners of the early 1900s who installed electric motors but maintained steam-era factory layouts, today’s public affairs firms often deploy Al tools that merely automate existing processes rather than reimagining what’s possible.

At Bullpen Strategy Group, we’ve taken this historical lesson to heart. Rather than simply augmenting our current capabilities with AI, we asked ourselves a more fundamental question: What if we could completely transform how information is gathered, analyzed, and utilized?

From Constraint to Opportunity

For decades, the monitoring of congressional committee hearings has followed a predictable pattern. Organizations either dedicate significant staff resources to manually track hearings or rely on expensive, keyword-based alert systems that miss critical context and nuance. The result is a persistent intelligence gap-prohibitive costs, delayed insights, and missed opportunities.

This constraint became our opportunity. Rather than accepting the traditional tradeoffs between comprehensive coverage and manageable costs, we envisioned a solution that eliminates this false choice entirely.

Introducing Rotunda: Intelligence Reimagined

Today, we’re proud to announce BSG: Rotunda-a next-generation intelligence platform that fundamentally rethinks how organizations monitor and analyze congressional activity.

Rotunda isn’t simply an automated version of traditional hearing monitoring. It represents a complete reimagining of the intelligence gathering process, powered by our proprietary AI Swarm technology-an autonomous cluster of AI agents that can simultaneously monitor multiple data feeds with unprecedented precision and insight.

Unlike conventional solutions that rely on rigid keyword matching, Rotunda understands context, identifies significant moments, and delivers actionable intelligence in real-time. It’s the difference between having dozens of analysts watching every hearing and having something even better-a system that never misses a beat, never needs a break, and continuously improves its understanding of what matters to your organization.

Breaking Through the Early-Stage Trap

How did we escape the early-stage Al trap? By focusing on three principles that challenge conventional thinking:

Reimagining the Possible

Instead of asking “How can Al make our current process better?” we asked “What would be possible if the traditional constraints of legislative monitoring didn’t exist?” This shift in perspective led us to design a solution that doesn’t just improve existing workflows-it enables entirely new capabilities that were previously unimaginable.

With Rotunda, organizations can now track every committee hearing simultaneously, receive instant notifications when their issues are discussed, and generate comprehensive summaries without deploying a single staff member to monitoring tasks.

Building for Domain Specialists, Not Technologists

Many AI solutions require users to become quasi-technologists, learning new interfaces and adapting their workflows to accommodate technology limitations. We flipped this approach, designing Rotunda to seamlessly integrate with how public affairs professionals actually work.

The platform delivers insights through familiar channels like email and Slack, offers intuitive search capabilities that don’t require specialized query languages, and generates summaries that are ready to share with stakeholders-no technical expertise required.

Creating Adaptable Intelligence, Not Rigid Automation

Perhaps most importantly, we recognized that true intelligence isn’t about rigid automation-it’s about adaptability. Rotunda doesn’t just follow predefined rules; it learns from user interactions, adapts to emerging priorities, and continuously refines its understanding of what matters to each organization.

The Future of Public Affairs Intelligence

What makes Rotunda transformative isn’t just the technology-it’s the reimagining of what’s possible when organizations are freed from traditional constraints.

Public affairs teams using Rotunda are discovering that they can reallocate hundreds of hours previously spent on monitoring to high-value strategic activities.

Legal teams are identifying relevant legislative developments they would have missed entirely. Corporate government affairs departments are providing executives with insights mere minutes after key statements are made in committee hearings, rather than days later.

This is the true promise of Al in public affairs-not just making existing processes marginally better, but creating entirely new capabilities that transform how organizations operate.

Building Your Own Future

As you consider your organization’s approach to AI adoption, I encourage you to look beyond incremental improvements. Ask yourself: What constraints have we accepted as inevitable? What would be possible if those constraints were eliminated entirely?

The most significant opportunities often lie not in automating what you already do, but in reimagining what you could do if traditional limitations no longer applied.

At Bullpen Strategy Group, we’re committed to applying this mindset not just to our own operations, but to developing solutions that help all our clients escape the early-stage trap and realize the transformative potential of Al.

To learn more about how Rotunda can transform your approach to intelligence, visit our website or contact us directly. The future of public affairs intelligence has arrived-and it looks nothing like the past.

For many in the public affairs industry, Artificial Intelligence has rapidly become both a promise and a puzzle. Just as investors at the turn of the millennium saw web technology as a universal disruptor, today’s public affairs professionals increasingly hear that AI will revolutionize their work. However in practice, for many the expected surge in productivity and innovation has been more elusive than anticipated.

To understand why – we must go back not 20 years, but 120 years.

In the late 19th century, despite clear benefits and the revolutionary potential of electric motors, American factories remained overwhelmingly reliant on steam power well into the early 1900s. Early adopters replaced massive steam engines with electric motors, only to find themselves disappointed. Costs didn’t decrease significantly, and productivity gains were marginal. The underlying reason, however, was not that electricity was overrated but that factory owners had not fully grasped how deeply they needed to reimagine their entire operation.

Steam-powered factories were rigid structures, arranged around the logistical necessity of a massive, central engine and sprawling, cumbersome shafts transmitting power across workspaces. Workers operated at the rhythm of machinery, not their own productivity. Electricity, by contrast, allowed flexibility, autonomy, and a completely new approach to manufacturing—one in which the layout, architecture, workforce management, and production processes themselves had to change entirely. It wasn’t until factory owners embraced the broader implications of electricity—rethinking their operational logic—that transformative productivity finally emerged, decades later.

Today, the public affairs and communications sector stands at a similar crossroads with AI. Many firms may be investing heavily in AI technologies and platforms (or talking about doing so at least…), but they limit their vision to automating or slightly enhancing current practices, often leading to modest improvements at best.

The real power of AI in public affairs is its ability to unlock entirely new possibilities—solutions that were previously inconceivable or prohibitively complex. AI can enable professionals to draw unprecedented insights from expansive, disparate datasets, to integrate decades of research and public information seamlessly into contemporary decision-making, and empowers even non-technical professionals to craft custom software solutions uniquely tailored to highly specialised challenges.

AI demands more than just technological integration; it requires cultural and operational transformation.

To unlock the transformative power of AI, public affairs professionals must be willing to be bold in assessing the foundations of how they do what they do. Organizations must champion cross-disciplinary collaboration and innovation, encouraging teams from diverse backgrounds to collaboratively imagine and implement entirely new solutions. We must become more ambitious and imaginative in defining and tackling challenges, leveraging AI’s capabilities to explore possibilities once considered too complex or impractical.

The AI revolution in public affairs will similarly unfold incrementally. The firms that reap its greatest rewards will be those willing to challenge conventional wisdom, reimagine their strategic processes, and truly adapt to a radically different operational landscape. Only then will we see productivity soar, unlocking the full promise of AI—a transformation that, while slower than initially expected, is certain to be profound and enduring.

For much of the last year, the team at Bullpen Strategy Group has been working with our clients to prepare for the “Super Bowl of Tax” – Washington’s nickname for the coming 2025 debate over extending President Trump’s 2017 tax cut legislation, which largely sunsets this year. 

Trillions in federal policymaking are on the table with diverse and competing interests at stake. Strategic, aggressive public affairs and communications campaigns can provide the decisive edge in persuading lawmakers and influencing key officials.

BSG is prepared to help you achieve your policy objectives this year with a range of services including:

– Strategic Guidance and Project Management
– Communications and Media Relations
– Legislative Issue Tracking and Media Intelligence
– Actionable Research and Analysis
– National, State, and Local Grassroots and Grasstops Organizing
– Targeted Digital Campaigns and Social Media Management
– Polling and Focus Group Testing

The BSG team has extensive experience working on tax policy—inside and outside of government. We have worked on Capitol Hill, including on committees that wrote the 2017 tax reform bill, and with key players in the administration. In this new political era, we can help translate your policy goals into action that reaches and resonates with decisionmakers.

We’d love to talk about how we can support your cause. Please reach out to me at mzona@bullpenstrategygroup.com.

We recently asked the BSG staff for the books they enjoyed most in 2024. We were impressed by the diversity and range of selections they chose – a mix of fiction, history, social science, and pop culture. The list below might help you find something great to pick up as we head into 2025. Happy Holidays!