A data scientist rooted through millions of tweets to find words associated with either “geek” or “nerd”. His name is Burr Settles and he works for Duolingo, a crowd sourcing translation platform. Settles plotted his results on this infographic.

We’re not sure how many of these alternate words we really identify with (even if others may put those labels on us!), but we do like Settle’s general definition for both geeks and nerds:

Geek – An enthusiast of a particular topic or field. Geeks are collection oriented, gathering facts and mementos related to their subject of interest. They are obsessed with the newest, coolest, trendiest things that their subject has to offer.

Nerd – A studious intellectual, although again of a particular topic or field. Nerds are “achievement” oriented, and focus their efforts on acquiring knowledge and skill over trivia and memorabilia.

Both are dedicated to their subjects, and sometimes socially awkward. The distinction is that geeks are fans of their subjects, and nerds are practitioners of them…. Note that, while not synonyms, they are not necessarily distinct either: many geeks are also nerds (and vice versa).

We’re proudly both geeks and nerds when it comes to city building, urban sustainability and infrastructure (although we do also like to think we’re not ever socially awkward).  We are very fortunate to work with a wide range of great organizations in many different places on lots of interesting projects.  We also spend a lot of spare time reading, viewing and discussing (though some of our colleagues may say sometimes “waxing” on) material about urban sustainability and infrastructure.  We also occasionally bring clients and colleagues together for informal networking events, but time and distance limit the depth and breadth of these conversations. This blog is intended as a broader and more permanent platform for us to vent, amuse and inform. We hope our enthusiasm is infectious, at the very least tolerable.

Trent, Will and Gerard