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.
