The TechSoup team are hard at work continuing to add updates, new functionality, and usability to techsoup.org - here's a message from co-CEO Marnie Webb with more details:

At TechSoup Global we’ve been working hard on a new round of improvements to the TechSoup.org website.

I’m excited to update you on our progress and hear your feedback. A little over a year ago, we unveiled the first phase in a series of improvements to the site, including a new homepage design and enhanced search functionality. Those visible changes to the site also represented significant improvement to our back end systems — both hardware and software.

I was touched by Marnie's opening address, largely because it addressed the importance of this resonant issue:

Less talk ===> more action.

Everyone was all a-flutter earlier this week when Google introduced a new feature that allows you to vote search results up or down based on their accuracy and track it on a search wiki. The implication is that from now on the web will be a giant popularity contest where, if you haven’t been voted for, you’re a nobody! For non-profits, this is sure to be a refreshing change from the current state of Google search, where you’re nobody unless you’ve been clicked on and linked to.

Well, plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose.

A BIG congratulations to CompuMentor/TechSoup  Co-CEO, Marnie Webb, for being named one of the 50 most powerful and influential people in the nonprofit sector on The Nonprofit Times' annual list.  Marnie is one of the driving forces behind TechSoup's NetSquared initiative.

Marnie is a frequent speaker and writer on nonprofits and technology, a founding member of the Nonprofit Emerging Technology Exchange, and an organizer of the NPTech tagging experiment.  You can read her NPTech musings on her blog, ext337.

Congratulations, Marnie!

Flickr photo credit: mwebb in someone else's shades by Susan Hellein

Check out the guest column, "Harness the social web before it harnesses you" by our own Marnie Webb in the Philanthropy Journal. Here's a blurb to tempt ya:

To make these tools work for you, you need to follow two key guidelines:

Check out more of the Conference session videos online at ForaTV.  You can view them all as thumbnails in the archive here: http://fora.tv/fora/search.php?searchid=79

Or go to each individual new session link below:                                                     Conversation with Angela Glover Blackwell, moderated by Daniel Ben-Horin, President & Co-CEO of Compumentor.

The Distributed Grassroots Marketing Team: Letting Your Community, Advocates, Evangelists, and Fans Do the Heavy Lifting featuring panelists Tara Hunt, Chris Messina, and Elisa Camahort with moderator Marnie Webb, VP of Knowledge Services at Compumentor.

The $100 Laptop: Simplicity Can Be Complicated featuring panelist Michael Bletsas with moderator Michael Brown.

Again, thanks to LinkTV for their tireless video coverage of the event. <

You can hear an interview by Harry Osibin (pictured left) with CompuMentor's Vice President of Knowledge Services, Marnie Webb on the Harry O Show at harryo.org.