thank you for your interest in Wiki Loves Monuments. There are in total 33 subscriptions to this mailing list, and that is much more than I hoped for when we started this! I hope we can together set up a wonderful cooperation on a European level - the first in its kind. I apologize for the (once again) long email - there is just so much to write!

First of all, for those that might have missed it, let me refer to the earlier post where I explained the concept I had in mind at the time: [1] and the post mortem of Wiki Loves Monuments 2010 with a lot of helpful information: [2]. I hope this e-mail will clarify a bit where we are, and where we are going.

Considering the high interest up to now, it seems very likely that we will try to pull this off definitely! September seems rather far away still, but please note there are some steps that take a lot of time (especially getting the raw data and building lists and a community), so we really have to get started soon to avoid stressing too much later on.

I will send in a week or two a more worked out concept of what Wiki Loves Monuments could look like. I hope for your input up to that moment, and after that as well.

There are a few important points I would like to share with you:

1) Wiki Loves Monuments EU 2011 will be organized in a federative way - that means that you are responsible for organizing a contest in your own country. Ideally following similar principles, but there will be a lot of own responsibility. We do want to make it easier for you though, so if you need advise, we will be available; technical infrastructure can of course be shared.

2) If you are interested to participate, even if you do not know for sure yet, or if there are dependencies, please share that information! We created a table on Wikimedia Commons, [3], please fill that table with the information available for your country! Especially the chapter contact and the "want to do WLM" columns. If you have doubts and need advise, just start a new thread on this mailing list and we can all help each other.

3) Getting the monument info. As explained at [2], addresses etc for the monuments to create lists from is crucial for organizing a successful Wiki Loves Monuments. Our experience is that the organizations governing this data are not very protective, and might be very enthusiast if we want to use it in a disclosing way. If you want to run a Wiki Loves Monuments in your country, you need this data. First step is to find out which organization in your country has the rights to release this data. Second is to see if you have any (direct or indirect) connections to that organization. If you have, please approach the organization yourself, and share your experiences with other chapters! If you do not have any contacts, and your only option is a "cold call" - then please contact Wikimedia Nederland (through Maarten Dammers) - we have several enthusiast partners which have good contacts with sister organizations in other European countries. They might be able to provide contact details of the right person. We probably need a few days up to a week to get you that information.

4) In general: please communicate a lot and swiftly through this list. Most likely multiple countries will encounter similar problems which we never thought of in the Netherlands - please share them, and don't think you will be the only one.

5) A good thing to keep in mind, probably stating the obvious, this is a typical project where a chapter can only /facilitate/ the community. There is a high dependency on volunteer activity on the project, and if there is no interest from volunteers for this, don't start with it.

6) If you need any kind of advice, just ask for it. Maarten and I (and probably many others) are willing to help out in any way possible - if necessary to get your community motivated, we could come and give a workshop/brainstorm session for a day or so (February might be a good month for that), but please approach us quickly about that! If you have any out of the box ideas on this, share them!

I look forward to any replies and input, lets make this list alive! I would appreciate it if every chapter that actually read the whole email would just make its presense known, so that we know how many chapters are here and listening, and who needs to be approached privately once again.