I started working at a little organization called CompuMentor in April, 2000 — just a few weeks before the launch of TechSoup.  Since that launch, we’ve changed a lot — the organization has grown and changed its name.  We’ve launched services in other countries, managed a challenge or two.  We even own islands.  And the services we launched with, back in 2000, have grown and deepened and, today, reach organizations in almost every county of the United States.

All that, and we haven’t been able to get our website changed.  Like many organizations, our operations have been running behind the opportunities and we’ve been learning so much for the opportunities that it feels like we haven’t been able to catch up.  So this morning, when we flipped the switch and went from look like this:

to looking like this:

I was beside myself.  A lot of folks did a tremendous amount of work to make this happen but I’d be absolutely remiss if I did not thank Susan Mernit (@susanmernit for those of you on twitter) for her support and leadership of our UI/UX team on this project. Susan did everything you want a great consultant to do:  she provided us with expertise, experience and she pushed our team — and our leaders — to be better and to overcome the kind of organizational inertia and fear that can get in the way of these projects (and has certainly gotten in our way in the past).

We still have a lot to do — like all the other pages on the site.  But the revamped homepage, newly implemented tools and vastly improved search give us a strong base to build on.

And, of course, we really do want your feedback.  And I’ll be getting back to you all in other week or so with what we’ve learned.