I’ve been Hamburg. Thoughts on my @wearehh #RoCur experiences

I was suggested for Hamburg’s #RoCur (Rotation Curation) account @WeAreHH some weeks ago by @ralfa. At that time I hadn’t even notice the hashtag and what is behind it. I read the infos at wearehamburg.com, tweeted @snoopsmaus who is doing a great job in voluntarily organizing this project, and now I am just finishing my week of #RoCur.

So… the idea of #RoCur is that one account is used by one person for one week and then it switches to the next one. Actually I followed @sweden for a long time, noticing that its user switches every week but not getting the general idea behind it which is that one region/city/country is represented by a random inhabitant for a while to get an impression of its diversity. I hated the concept of patriotism since I was a kid while sticking a little longer to the sub concept of local patriotism. And I still think it stinks, because every concept of over-identifying with regional entities is always joined with the exclusion (and discursive creation) of “the Other”.

However most #RoCur-projects including @WeAreHH are not connected to citizenship or origin but just to who is living there – which includes immigrants and short term inhabitants who share there experience. And I think it’s always worth to get some “insider”’s expressions from a certain place you are interested in rather than from a tourist guide or comparable resources.

As a short conclusion what a week of #RoCur meant to me, I can state:

  • For me it’s something completely different to communicate in English rather than in German and getting favs for your random pics and stuff from Pakistan and elsewhere rather than just from your roundabouts. Naturally many non german speaking people I follow with my usual account don’t follow back, so it remains one way communication there. I’m still considering if I should blog in English or in German…?
  • I felt much more committed to tweet anything even if I didn’t feel like than usually.
  • I shouted out to people I didn’t know: even if @WeAreHH currently has less followers than my private @plastikstuhl account it felt much more public to tweet to the @WeAreHH account, cause I didn’t grow with it’s followers.
  • there was a pressure to tweet something even if I didn’t feel like it because I was supposed to do.

I hope I can keep up following some #RoCur-accounts in the future. I think there is some potential in enriching my perspective. What didn’t really felt natural to me was to read my new timeline (the tweets which came in for the @WeAreHH-account): it was just to random. But the process of communicating from a different point of view was really a little bit enlightening.

3 Replies to “I’ve been Hamburg. Thoughts on my @wearehh #RoCur experiences”

  1. Thanks for your summary. I’ll take over as curator this weekend and I’m slightly nervous coz what I’ll tweet shouldn’t be as random as what I normally tweet. At least that’s what I tell myself 😉 We’ll see how I do..

    1. No need to panic… 😉 I actually tried to post as usual. But in English instead of German. I think I haven’t been quiet as familiar and personal as I am on @plastikstuhl … probably because my timeline felt rather strange.

      I think it’s also helpful to observer what other #RoCur-ers from elsewhere do and tweet.

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