You may have noticed some visual changes to The National Improv Network. We wanted to write and fill you in on exactly what’s going on.

Last year we spent a good portion of time traveling abroad learning how theatres and festivals worked; how they advertised, how they performed, how they coached. It was a great experience. When we returned we started working towards making the site more accessible and useful to improvisors around the world. As of today, we’re happy to announce that the site is now a place for performers from around the world to meet and exchange ideas.

As such, we thought the name “National Improv Network” no longer applied, so we’ve renamed the site “The Improv Network” to reflect a true global improv community.

So what does that mean for you and your experience? Very little actually. Visitors from around the world are going to be able to access the site with an interface they are familiar with; date formats, phone number formatting, time zones. It’s going to adapt to their viewing experience. If you’re used to visiting the page from the U.S. your interface will stay the same since the U.S. formatting has been the default for a long time. Festival submissions and troupe creation will be essentially the same (with the addition of one or two fields here and there).

In June, we’ll be putting out a conversion tool for existing users. It’s a totally optional tool that you can run once and it will update all of your troupe, theatre and festival pages (as well as your personal profile) to be more readable for readers outside North America. The conversion process will take about 30 seconds.

Other than that, the site will still provide a lot of the same tools we always have. Some of the changes will be trickling in over the next week or two, but we’re happy to be part of the International Community.