I’m Steve, a freelance writer, editor and communications consultant based in Amsterdam.
My background is journalism, as a happy generalist writing for a general audience. I’ve also won prizes as copywriter, editor-in-chief and screenwriter. My specialties have evolved over time. They mainly began with food, drink, travel, and culture. This eventually morphed into including the (mostly) separate subjects of sex and AI.
You can say I’ve been around the block.
For the past five years, I have been primarily busy as a thought leadership (ghost)writer and content strategist for organisations applying AI in life sciences and manufacturing. For a sector that often struggles to talk to itself, a generalist is useful. These fields need someone who can explain the researcher’s work to the regulator and the regulator’s concerns to the executive without losing anyone. Naturally, the actual end-users – and the general public – should also be included in the conversation. You don’t need jargon. You just need to cut to the chase.
Background
Our Man In Amsterdam…
I came to Amsterdam in the 1990s to reverse the journey my parents made as immigrants to Canada. After years as a carpenter, B-actor and doorman, I became a freelance journalist and editor/writer of guidebooks. I’ve contributed to such publications as The New York Times, The Guardian, Time Out, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Conde Nast Traveller, Wallpaper, The Globe & Mail and Atlas Obscura covering travel, food/drink, design/architecture, Yuri Gagarin, Slavic gangster kitsch, the-idea-of-Europe, and all-things-Amsterdam.
Columnist… What do sex and machines have in common?
My first column was back in the 1990s as Time Out London’s ‘Our Man in the Gutter, Amsterdam’. Not wanting to be typecast, I next wrote ‘Eel-Advised’, which explored how some of the stranger aspects of Amsterdam’s history can still pop up in the present day. ‘In This Issue And…’ were my weekly musings as Editor-in-Chief of the cultural paper Amsterdam Weekly.
I peaked as a columnist with over 200 editions of ‘Sex in the Press’, a weekly news round-up on sex & relationships for global sex ed platform Love Matters. (Read all about it here: ‘What I Learned From Googling “Sex” Every Day For Four Years’).
Fun fact: I would later use the exact same format for a monthly column for the AI unicorn Augury.com: ‘Manufacturing – The News’. With this column, I became somewhat less popular at dinner parties, talking less about the latest in orgasm research and more about how AI is transforming manufacturing. Regardless, sex and AI are more related than most people think. They’re both ultimately about the end user.
Copywriter: one-liners and more
In the advertising world, I’m usually a smartass-for-hire who gets called when someone says, ‘We need something funny.’ (But yes, I’ve also long since learned the art of self-editing to be compatible with more serious-minded target audiences.)
I’ve worked on international communication campaigns and projects for Affordable Art Fair, Amnesty Netherlands, Amsterdam Economic Board, Amsterdam Science Park, Augury, City of Amsterdam, City of The Hague, Converse, Diesel, DSM-Dyneema, European Cultural Foundation, ECCO, Fatboy, Heineken, IDFA, IKEA, Kipster, Rijksmuseum, Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, TomTom and Zoku.
I’ve worked with creative agencies such as DEPT, KesselsKramer, Natwerk, StrawberryFrog, Tribal DDB and Wink.
Editor: leading creative teams
Starting in 2005, I was Editor-in-Chief of the cultural paper Amsterdam Weekly for 175 printed issues and 14 European Newspaper Awards. Attracted to more varied deadlines, I returned to my freelancing roots in 2009.
For example, between 2012 and 2017, I was a founding editor and columnist at the multiple-award-winning online platform Love Matters – which brought sex education to the youth who most need it, via mobile. This experience also got me properly up to speed on multimedia, UX, SEO and analytics.
In 2018, I travelled the world – France, China, Tunisia, etc. – for Book of Denim, Vol.2 (Amsterdam Publishing, 2018), to write in-depth features on individuals and companies working to transform the notoriously dirty textile industry. This experience sparked a lasting interest in manufacturing and how things are made.
On AI and thought leadership…
Some years ago, I was seduced by the hopes and dreams of using traditional machine learning to improve healthcare outcomes. Suddenly, I found myself engaging with all these inspired individuals/organisations/companies and writing about them for Elsevier, the Amsterdam Economic Board, the Amsterdam Science Park and the City of Amsterdam. Many of these articles were ghostwritten for the thought leaders establishing Amsterdam as a hub for AI and the life sciences. My brain expanded – and only expanded more when GenAI appeared.
A generalist writing for a general audience has a lot to offer this sector. The goal is always uniting a whole bag of cats: moneyed funders, perfectionist academics, restless entrepreneurs, measured regulators, and the actual end-user. My job is connecting with the right people and finding the right stories that support that process. In practice, it is being an in-house journalist embedded in a marketing team.
For four years this was literally the job, half-time, at Augury, an AI-for-manufacturing unicorn. The strategy was clear: the blog was not a place for direct marketing but somewhere people came to think. My monthly column, ‘Manufacturing – The News’, became essential reading for people trying to keep up with a fast-moving industry. The tone set it apart: direct, human, and unafraid of humour.
I continue to ghostwrite for AI leaders across other fields and have a front row seat to how AI is applied differently between manufacturing versus the life sciences, and differently again between the US and Europe. The challenges are converging. Everyone is trying to figure this out. That suits me.
The Augury editorial operation – voice, strategy, column, and audience – are repeatable, and building them is what I do. The work I find most satisfying is the embedded, long-term kind, where you’re part of the team rather than a hired pen. If you’re a European company navigating the US market, or a US company trying to land properly in Europe, there’s a particular fit. I work on both sides.
People occasionally ask whether AI will replace writers like me. My answer is: not the part that matters most. AI is very good at generating content. It is genuinely not good at the interview, at building enough trust that someone tells you the thing they’ve never said out loud, the thing they didn’t even know was the story. That’s still the job. And I love it.
For more on my experiences writing about AI & innovation: ‘What I learned from talking to yet another AI genius every week for six years’ and ‘12 things AI tech experts wish you knew‘.
Workshops and teaching
Having reached that “desperately experienced” career phase, I am often asked to teach classes or lead workshops. It’s great: it keeps me sprightly. Subjects have included ‘Journalism 101’, ‘How to nail story’, ‘Ask a writer anything’, and ‘Make a magazine in a day’. Groups have ranged from communication students to team-building colleagues to the press corps of the Model UN, to innovation teams who want to tell better stories to convince their decision-makers to adopt a particular emerging technology.
In short…
Still looking for new subjects to get obsessed with. More specifically: looking for the next long-term editorial partnership with an organisation that is building something worth explaining to the people who need to act on it.
Reach out. I’m friendly.
Steve Korver
stevekorver[@]gmail.com
