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