The next marker

If you've read the Why Cairn page you'll know the name comes from a trail in Kahurangi. Piles of rock, built by the people who went before, showing the way across ground where the path isn't obvious. You reach one, get your bearings, and look for the next.

This is the next one.

On 1 September, Justin Flitter and I signed the paperwork that brings Cairn and AI New Zealand together. I've joined AI New Zealand as a Director and Chief Technology Officer. Cairn Consulting becomes a 50% shareholder, and Cairn's clients become AI New Zealand clients.

How it happened

Justin and I met at the NZ AI Roadshow when it came through Dunedin in 2024. He'd been building AI New Zealand since 2017, mostly on his own with a group of contractors and partners. I'd been building Cairn from the other end of the country with a similar idea: practical AI that Kiwi organisations can use on a Monday, not a slide deck about what might be possible.

We started working together almost straight away, first on AI New Zealand clients, then on the Microsoft Copilot training programmes. Somewhere along the way it stopped feeling like two businesses helping each other and started feeling like one team that happened to have two names.

In January this year we started talking about what a proper partnership would look like. It took eight months. It was rigorous, at times uncomfortable, and worth every hour of it. Doing this properly mattered more to both of us than doing it quickly.

What it means if you're a Cairn client

Not much changes on the day to day. I'm still here, still your point of contact, and still based in Dunedin. Your engagement carries on as agreed.

What you gain is the rest of the team. AI New Zealand has advisors, trainers and engineers in Auckland, New Plymouth and Christchurch, the AI Academy with thousands of members, the free AI Benchmark, and the AI Operating System for organisations that want AI running as a governed, managed capability rather than a set of experiments. Everything I was doing as one person now has depth behind it.

Practically: engagements are now scoped and invoiced through AI New Zealand, and you'll see the AI New Zealand name on proposals and paperwork from here on. The services listed at newzealand.ai are the current ones, so if you're looking for what we offer, look there rather than here.

What about technology strategy?

Some of you came to Cairn for technology strategy rather than AI: the CIO-level thinking, the roadmap, the second opinion on a vendor. Cairn no longer offers that as a service. It's still part of what I bring to the table, but only inside an AI New Zealand engagement, alongside the rest of the team. If that's what you need, get in touch through AI New Zealand and we'll shape it up.

What stays with Cairn

Cairn isn't closing. It's a shareholder in AI New Zealand, and this site stays as the home for two things.

The Cairn podcast keeps going. The blog keeps going, and I'll keep writing here about running, leadership and whatever I'm learning. Everything else, including Compass, which has become the AI Benchmark at newzealand.ai, now lives with AI New Zealand.

Why

I built Cairn to help organisations find their footing with technology they didn't fully trust yet. A few years in, the demand had outgrown what one person in Dunedin could do well. I could keep saying no to good work, or I could join the people I was already doing the best of it with.

Two practices that were already walking the same trail, now walking it together. That's the whole story.

If you want to talk about any of this, drop me a line. connect@cairn.nz still reaches me, and so does ben@newzealand.ai.

Ben