Welcome, Willkommen!
Hi, I’m Reiner Gärtner. I live in Newcastle, and I’ve never fit too tidily into a box. I stopped trying to a long time ago, and these days I rather like the view from half outside the frame.
What has stayed put is the angle I look from, usually a slightly different one than the rest of the room. It doesn’t suit everyone, and it isn’t meant to - but it suits the handful of people I most like to work with.
For more than thirty years I’ve worked where technology meets human understanding - as a journalist first, and since then as a content creator, consultant and coach. I started out explaining CompuServe and the first web browsers, then how search engines really decided what you got to see, from AltaVista to Google’s PageRank. These days it’s mostly AI. The tools keep reinventing themselves; the actual job, helping people understand them and use them well, has barely changed.
I’ve always moved between strategy, the technical side and the everyday practical bit. What interests me is whether a technology genuinely makes someone’s work or life better, not whether it looks clever.
So now my work sits where content and judgement meet AI. I use these tools every day, properly, and I’m fairly opinionated about which parts of the job I’ll hand over. The deciding, the judging, knowing whether something is actually any good, that part stays with me. The better the tools get, the more it matters that a human is still choosing what’s worth doing in the first place. I’ve written about where I draw that line, accent and all.
Nobody has all the answers in a field moving this fast. Here’s a look at what I’m working on and what I’ve picked up along the way.
I’m always happy to connect on LinkedIn, or you can get in touch directly.