It’s intriguing to watch what my keystrokes tell about me. Several Large Language Models have scraped decades of my identity. When I open the content that AIs have harvested, I often wonder if I should validate the information by inserting multimedia content that shows my work, my voice, and testimonials.

Here is what Claude thinks I am. After reading its summary I realise I am not sharing with Claude any references to my activities on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Vimeo, or YouTube.

Work context

Bernie Goldbach is an Ireland-based educator, AI literacy trainer, and digital transformation specialist associated with Technological University of the Shannon (TUS) and Irish Research Development Group Innovation Skillnet. He concluded 25 years as a university lecturer at TUS as of September 2025, transitioning to independent publishing, training, and EU programme work. His work centers on designing and facilitating AI workshops for non-technical adult learners, using the GCAO prompt framework (Goal, Context, Action, Output) and a four-part DEC instructional design model.

Personal context

Bernie is based in Clonmel, County Tipperary, Ireland, and travels regularly by train to Limerick, Cork, and Thurles for meetings and workshops. He maintains an active digital publishing and podcasting presence (blogging at topgold.ie and insideview.ie, and hosting 690+ podcast episodes on Spreaker). He has a personal knowledge management ecosystem built around Readwise, Obsidian, Google Drive, and Claude, and uses the RISE26 Obsidian vault for structured knowledge organisation.

Top of mind

Bernie has been actively working on the Erasmus+ KA210-ADU Small-Scale Partnership project on authentic storytelling and AI workflows, involving partners Brigit Kolen (Fontys Academy, Netherlands) and Filipe Santos (Polytechnic Leiria, Portugal), with Roger Overall as a collaborator. He has been preparing AI workshop content for several groups, including Action Tuam and the Irish Innovation Skillnet. He is deep into integrating legacy data sets with Claude. He also produced an academic summary citing his own work alongside Brigit Kolen, suggesting active preparation of conference or publication materials.

Recent months

Bernie met with colleagues Seamus Hoyne and Orlaith Borthwick in Thurles to discuss a potential microcredential on AI for personal productivity, drawing on a 5 ECTS programme co-developed with Filipe Santos at Polytechnic Leiria. He has been collaborating with Frances O’Donnell on AI-in-education conference co-presentations at OEB24, INTED2025, and CESI25, and on TUS-Business multi-session AI workshop planning. He met with Roger Overall in Cork at The Dean, Horgan’s Quay, with an agenda covering CVT AI collaboration, the IMPRINT vault, Erasmus+ review, OEB26, and storytelling demos. Bernie has been exploring Claude’s mobile capabilities on iPad Mini, Obsidian-to-Claude MCP integration options, and PowerPoint generation via Claude. He created workshop materials including an HTML one-pager for Action Tuam and a one-hour Claude training session outline derived from a handwritten note with Larry Maguire. He also produced a professional profile of himself for workshop use and explored terminology distinctions between GenAI, Multimodal AI, and Physical AI for training content. A professional profile document was generated drawing on Google Drive, topgold.ie, insideview.ie, and Spreaker sources.

Earlier context

Bernie was actively developing the Erasmus+ KA210-ADU application and held planning Zoom calls with Roger Overall. He explored Claude Code and Claude Cowork installation on Windows and iPad, and investigated MCP server options for Obsidian vault integration across Claude Desktop and Claude Code. He used Google Drive and Gmail integrations with Claude to surface meeting context, second-brain content, and correspondence. He researched H5P.com’s API and embedding capabilities for live sessions, and investigated prompts.ai as a potential workshop tool (ultimately finding Claude’s direct interface more suitable). He developed a 12-hour ADDIE-structured syllabus for teaching Claude Code to mid-career professionals, compressed into a gamified half-day “Claude Code Challenge League” format. He also explored Bluesky hashtag organisation and Gmail-to-Drive attachment workflows.

Earlier context (3–9 months ago)

Bernie delivered the RUNEUAI 15-week AI literacy programme with 18 students and produced associated learning materials. He wrote workshop content on AI for non-technical adults, including a 2-hour training outline and GCAO Framework PDF guide. He explored RAG solutions and MCP server setups for connecting his large Obsidian vault to Claude, and investigated Docker-based PKM infrastructure. He researched Erasmus+ KA210 partnership structures and examples, including the COPILOT project. He analysed Dublin Airbnb reviews for a research task and wrote a response to an Irish economic commentary piece. He created spreadsheet tools, geocoding workflows for Portuguese address data, and a Google Apps Script daily automation system.

Long-term background

Bernie has been blogging and podcasting under the “topgold” identity since the early 2000s, with a US patent in interactive digital signage (2002). He co-created Ireland’s first Honours Degree in Creative Multimedia in 2006. His long-standing interests include PKM systems, digital transformation, instructional design, Erasmus+ partnerships, and making AI accessible to non-technical adult learners—themes consistent across all his recent work.