In the meantime, data protection, cybersecurity, fire safety, occupational safety and ergonomics have been added to the topic of the EU AI Act. And because AI was the starting point of this whole story, it also has a special place beyond that: with additional courses that are not only intended to explain which rules apply to AI, but above all how to use it sensibly and competently in day-to-day work.

That’s why the platform is still called EU AI Act Academy today. The name reminds me of where this whole story began.

And beneath the name, these words sum up what it has become:

Work safely. Use AI wisely. Put knowledge into practice.

That is how the few ideas I marched into my father’s nursing home with back then turned into something that no longer has much in common with my original plan.

And yet, at the same time, it has a great deal in common. Because I kept one benchmark: my father should understand what I am actually doing. He was 88 years old when he told me, quite bluntly, that at first that was not the case. In the end, he knew what the EU AI Act is about.

And if I manage to present complex topics in a way that means people do not just complete a course, but can say afterwards: “Now I understand what this has to do with me and my day-to-day work,” then his criticism back then may have become one of the most important principles of this Academy.

I think he would have liked that.

Anyone who only wants to complete a course once a year and then file away a certificate will find plenty of other options.

My platform is designed differently.

Of course, a company needs evidence. Training must be documented, and a managing director or owner will, if necessary, want to be able to demonstrate that the required training has taken place.

But if we are making the effort to train people anyway, then in my view they should actually know something afterwards. And above all, they should be able to access it again later.

Because who still remembers every detail six months after a training course? I certainly don’t. The knowledge often becomes relevant precisely when you need it: a specific case comes up in day-to-day work and suddenly you think: There was something about that.

Then I don’t want to have to work through an entire course all over again first.

That is why the content remains accessible even outside the actual training. The full-text search can be used to look specifically for what is needed at the moment. Not at some point during the next mandatory training, but at the moment the question arises. But for me, there is something else to it as well.

Something I learned correctly once won’t necessarily stay correct forever.

Laws change. Requirements change. And sometimes a change simply means that knowledge that was still correct yesterday needs to be supplemented or corrected today.

In my view, it isn’t enough to quietly replace the text on the platform and hope that someone notices at some point. If relevant knowledge changes because the law has changed, targeted refresher training can be initiated.

That is exactly the difference for me between a course and a learning platform. And to be completely honest: small and medium-sized enterprises in particular often do not have the capacity to keep up to date.

Learn – look up – update.

Not starting everything from scratch every year. Instead, keeping knowledge available and providing refresher training where something has actually changed.

That sounds surprisingly self-evident.

But it is not always.

How do I actually want to learn myself?

After all, I’ve completed plenty of mandatory training sessions in my professional life. And if I’m being completely honest, the result was not always lasting knowledge. You take the course, answer the questions, and fulfil your obligation. A year later, the cycle begins again.

Fire safety training got me thinking. I realised it felt as though I’d been taking the same course for at least ten years. Until then, I’d thought: fire is fire. Protective clothing is protective clothing. What could possibly change that much?

Quite a lot, as I discovered during the development process.

Then there were the examples. I worked in administration. Why should I care how to move a pallet correctly in the warehouse? Of course, the warehouse employee needs to know that. But I needed different information for my daily work routine.

And then I asked myself another question that I had never really thought much about before: What do employees do with such training if they work for a German company but do not speak German well enough to reliably understand complex training texts?

My own answer at the time was shockingly simple: If they work here, they will know enough German. After all, no one has complained yet.

Well.

This is how the principle of today’s EU AI Act Academy gradually emerged.

There are basics that everyone needs. Then comes content for their own industry and, finally, the practical needs of their own department. Tailor-made instead of off-the-shelf.

And the content is not just available in German. Currently, there are nine languages. Not because nine languages look particularly impressive on a list, but because there are areas where a misunderstanding can be more than just annoying. Especially with fire safety and occupational health and safety, I don’t want “What on earth do they mean by that?” to eventually become “Oh, I guess they mean this…” and then be promptly applied incorrectly.

That’s why plain language matters to me too. Being complicated doesn’t automatically make you competent – and an impressive-sounding technical term doesn’t make anything easier to understand.

By then, however, I had become interested in AI, and I increasingly came across offers where I immediately thought: My God, what nonsense! You can do better.

Now, “You can do better” is easy to say. Whether you actually can do better is a completely different question.

Then, at some point, I saw the offer from a major continuing education provider: a four-hour course. At the end, you were even allowed to ask questions. That was the first time I seriously asked myself: Will people actually remember and use what they’ve learned? And can I really do better? If I’m seriously considering it, where would I start, and do I have the skills I need?

I wrote down a few ideas and marched off with them to my father at the nursing home. At that point, it really was only about the EU AI Act. I explained to him what I was planning, how I envisaged the whole thing, and what it might one day become.

My father listened to all of it patiently and then announced: “Well, I’m curious. But I didn’t understand anything about what you want to do there.”

Bullseye.

My father was 88 years old at the time, and that one sentence became a very good benchmark for me. If I talk about something complex and the other person still does not understand what it is actually about afterwards, I can of course say: The topic is simply complicated.

But I can also ask myself whether my explanation might be the problem.

So my standard became to set it up in a way that my 88-year-old father would understand it too. Not every detail, not every article and every paragraph. But he should understand what it is about and what it has to do with everyday life.

In the end, my father knew what the EU AI Act is about.

And a planned course slowly turned into something much bigger. Because the longer I worked on it, the more often I realised that one topic is connected to the next. AI has a lot to do with data protection, questions about occupational safety come up in day-to-day work, and fire safety is a topic for virtually every company anyway.

At some point, it was clear: it would be a learning platform with the standard mandatory training—just done my way.

From that ambition, little by little, came more and more of what I wanted to offer—because I would have loved to have had it myself.

And that led to the next question:

What does a learning platform actually need to look like so that you do not just sit through a course, but actually get something out of it afterwards?

First port of call: selling online.

I researched what offers were available on the market. Oh! Well, there are charlatans out there, and exorbitant prices are demanded for training – unbelievable.

That was the point where I had to make a decision. Or rather, I wanted to.

What kind of entrepreneur do I want to be?

To maximise revenue with an existing system – that’s what others do too. If I don’t do it, someone else will. We all know these phrases!

Then I would have arrived where others had been before me: financially secure and adjusting my own standards to what everyone else accepts. Everything’s running smoothly!

That is very tempting and very human, which is why it has become so established. As my friends always say: “There goes Langholz again, still chasing the ideals of her youth. – Grow up, girl!”

They’re right. I’ve always had ideals. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to see where reality puts limits on them. But I’ve never let reality destroy them.

I want to be an entrepreneur with ethical principles.

Unlike other entrepreneurs?!

No – with my own principles.

I sincerely hope I can uphold them until my last day.

So I kept searching.

Second approach: to counter the reckless operators out there.

My idea was to help people build another source of income, drawing on their knowledge and experience, at their own pace. People who are expected to work until 70, but are only around 55 and have already been struggling with a bad back for five years, for example.

People who cannot build up savings in their job to the extent that politicians imagine. They need a Plan B that doesn’t promise the moon – with the chic Dubai skyline in the background – but also honestly states that there is never a guarantee and that such a path also requires work, time, and a certain investment.

So I researched how others were doing it.

And that’s when I stumbled upon something that actually had nothing to do with my original idea.

There was a course on the EU AI Act. It was supposed to cost almost €800 and allegedly protect against fines of up to €35 million – even for three-person businesses.

I became curious.

What kind of law is this, where such figures are at stake?

So I started reading.