Recently at the 2011 Edinburgh International Television Festival, Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google,gave a lecture in which he commented on the need for the UK to nurture its polymaths and to bring back art and science together. This made me think of my colleagues at Tectrade, and the diversity of skills and talents across the teams. Whilst I wouldn’t be so bold to claim that Tectrade is full of polymaths, there is much evidence of art and science crossing-over as computer scientists, musicians, photographers, gastronomes, engineers, mathematicians, biologists, petrol-heads, linguists, economists, and (of course) athletes all combine their creative and scientific skills to deliver dynamic and reliable services. An interest in science and technology is certainly not exclusive to “geeks”, whilst business acumen and creative thinking is not the sole domain of the account manager.

This brings me on to the label “geek”. It appears to becoming increasingly used simply to describe anyone who has a passion for any specific interest – not necessarily limited to computers. Today it is “cool” to be a “geek” – recognition that being interested in technology is as much healthy aspiration as enjoying music or art. As a new parent, I am particularly interested in the need to consider this in our schools; coming back to Eric Schmidt’s theme, schools in the UK need to encourage tomorrows workforce to maintain a diverse interest in both the humanities and sciences for the whole duration of their academic life, rather than pigeonholing pupils into categories of those who do one and not the other.