Hi everyone,

It's that exciting time of the year again, Wiki Loves Monuments is getting started! I know several of you have already started, but if you haven't: this is a great time to do so!

The idea behind Wiki Loves Monuments is to invite the general audience in your country to photograph built heritage and share it with the world through Wikimedia Commons. We do that through a federated competition, which means that the national teams are key to our success: they organize the national competitions. At the end of the process, the national juries can nominate up to 10 photos to the international jury. The international jury will then consider those photos once again, and select the international winners. We will announce the prizes for the international winners later. 

If you are a group of Wikimedians, a chapter or user group that is interested in participating (again) this year, then please sign up! You can find a list of countries that has already done so here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2017/Participating_countries

If you want to know how to organize, please reach out to one of the members of the international team. You can also leave a message on the help desk or send an email to the public mailing list. We do have a fair amount of documentation available, but some of it may be outdated (we appreciate any help in improving it!).

Like last year, we've also added a tab called 'Organizers' in Wiki Loves
Monuments landing page on Commons:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2017/Organizers

We'd like to encourage you to add your name and those of your team members with a short description to the list. This information is helpful for those from outside of the
Movement or the project who end up on that page and want to learn more about your national competition, it also provides an opportunity for us to get to know each other via this one page. :) Every year, there are more than 150 national organizers that make Wiki Loves Monuments happen and it would be great to know more about all of these amazing people. :)

We will also have a presence at Wikimania this year, and organize a meetup. Please keep an eye out! 

If you like to stay informed, make sure you're a member of our discussion mailing list ( wikilovesmonuments@lists.wikimedia.org ). The most important announcements are also sent to our announcement mailing list: if you don't have much capacity for emails, please at least make sure multiple people in your team are subscribed to that! 

If you have any questions, please reach out! We're here to help each other. Lets have a great competition again :) 

Best,

Lodewijk
on behalf of the international team