I would have liked to have given a pre-start announcement for the
competition, maybe a week before it started. However, another member of the
competition had already worked on getting the global sitenotice set up to
start displaying on April 30th, and by the time I realized this it was
already the 29th, so there wasn't any point to sending an announcement the
day before and getting a lot of attention for something that wouldn't begin
for another 24 hours.
I personally called for volunteers and translators on March 18, when I was
the only one on the list of committee members:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-March/005926.html
It doesn't help when all the committee members from the previous year
disappear and I have to bootstrap the majority of the pages so that it
doesn't look like a lost cause with everything empty and people asking
what's up with the lack of activity on the village pump. I was grateful it
even got off the ground in English. Translations were icing on the cake
(but are most appreciated).
Let's polish it up for the final round.
-- Adrignola