Featured Follow: Red Gaskell
Please tell us a little bit about yourself, what do you do, and how do you like to spend your free time?
Friends say I have a lot of ideas. A lot of them are bad, like really bad, but some good ones eventually come along. I like walking around and just thinking quite a bit. If you run into me on the street I probably have a camera in my hand because I’m shooting something.
Cooking, reading, dancing, writing are some of my other hobbies. I also watch a ton of movies and TV shows.
Since you first tweeted 2384 days ago, what role has Twitter played in your daily life? When do you find yourself turning to 140 characters for personal and professional use? You seem pretty open but do you feel any pressure to constrain usage to one context of your life?
Its pretty mixed, I’m not sure when personal and professional really stop on there? There’s just too much overlap. It might be a bad thing but maybe that means I’m just doing what I really like to do. In the last year I’ve realized not everything needs to be said and I’m actively choosing what to tweet vs. just impulsively firing things off. It’s not that I feel pressure but I think that I want to be more positive and part of that is controlling myself.
What do you look for when you are interacting with folks on Twitter?
Content. I try to get a broad view of the world with the people I follow on there. A few friends, pop culture, marketers, tech people, VC’s, liberals and conservatives. I like learning about a broad range of things and having to rethink my opinions or views challenged. Also it’s just the best for sports and events coverage in general.
When it comes to the Twitter product, culture, community, and opportunities, is there anything that you wish you knew and acted on earlier?
Twitter has been a powerful tool for me professionally. I wish I knew you could tweet people further along in their careers when I was in high school. I didn’t really start using twitter to connect with people until I was working at Everlane. I caught up with Tiffany Zhong recently and she told me that’s what she did. She tweeted VC’s and tech folks and just asked questions and they answered. It was a pretty even exchange. They handed out advice from years of experience and she gave them accurate insights from one of the most sought after demographics — young people.
Wish I could have banked on that sooner.
Your digital presence and form of creative outputs is very wide ranging. From short videos and disappearing pictures to beautiful city streets, you’ve dabbled with a lot of photography, video production, and visual storytelling. Is there one medium or skill that you haven’t been able to spend time learning and exploring?
Painting, sketching, sculpture, woodworking, are some things I’d like to try. There’s still so much deeper to go with photography and video though.
What are 2–3 things you are currently thinking through that you’d enjoy having a conversation with others about?
Honestly don’t know. I like talking to people about pretty much anything they want to talk about. I ask questions until we find something that they’re really passionate about and then I learn something. It’s pretty great.
What idea would you like someone to be working on, that given a lack of time/energy, you cannot commit to work on yourself right now? #WhatWouldYouLikeToSeeInTheWorld
- How far/fast can you go around the world by just being nice to people.
- DMV, Social Security Office, etc need to be optimized. People basically have to take a whole day off for that. It’s terrible
- Gaskell Family merch
- Afternoon Nap Club — making naps as popular as SoulCycle
- Junk food wine pairings- either a YouTube or Instagram account
- How to get the first IG/Snapchat story from Mars
- How do we get people like me to be more involved in local/state politics?
- Can/should the subway train be a more social experience? People literally sit silence and aside from pleasantries exchanged we all don’t exist. I think some basic social interaction could be a very healthy way to start/end your day.
In the past month, what is an article, book, or video that’s made your mind go whoa?
Book: The War of Art — Necessary reading and referencing for anyone that makes stuff.
Video: Do What You Can’t — really great commercial for it at the Oscar’s, even more inspiring video released on YouTube. Mostly because I think I fall into this crowd, even if I don’t have the following yet.
Article: You May Want to Marry My Husband — Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Just read it.
You can learn more about Red by following him on Twitter & Instagram.
