Insights on our redesign

The Feb. 12 issue is the second one to appear with our new design. Feedback so far has been positive, though I didn't really expect anyone to say they hated it.

The most glowing praise was from the chairman of a mid-sized, publicly traded government IT company who wrote to say that we had gone from being an interesting read to a must read.

You'll notice a slight tweak in the Feb. 12 issue. Our tagline has changed from "Business Intelligence for Government Systems Integrators" to "The National Magazine for Government Contractors."

"Business intelligence" is an old catch word that while it sounds good, doesn't really mean much anymore.

The dropping of "systems integrators" reflects the changes in the marketplace. While systems integrators are the heart of our readership, there are a lot of other companies that we serve.

And with growing outsourcing and managed services work that contractors are taking on, the term doesn't seem to quite fit anymore.

With Washington Technology as the name of our magazine, we also decided not to put "IT" or "Information Technology" in the tag. This also reflects changes in the market. Many of the companies we write about are taking on projects such as processing passports and student loans or running finance and HR functions which at first glance aren't traditional IT projects, but are rich IT nonetheless.

We also want to embrace the other work companies are doing such as professional, engineering and scientific services.

We want to be more inclusive and the new tagline needs to reflect that.

The redesign, both in print and online, is a process that continues. There are going to be things we do that work and things we do that don't work.

I want to use this blog as forum to talk about the magazine, the Web site and the market. In short, I want to hear from you.