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Valve talks about a new dashboard for the game. They literally rebuilt it from scratch to make it "more intuitive and easier to use." The "Play Dota" button is always visible on every page in the new interface. They also made it so that lobbies can now be listed publicly by the lobby leaders.
The party system is also revamped. You can more easily invite friends, use party voice chat in the dashboard and through on to the game (even in loading screens), merge multiple parties together, and even open your party for others to join. You can now also see a friend's miniprofile by mousing over them, see an activity feed for a friend, look at a friend's record, and see a graph of your friends' play styles.
CHat has also been improved. There is support for chatting with friends, easily holding multiple conversations in multiple windows, having larger chat rooms, and more.
The Hero Browser has also been completely redesigned. You can now more easily find your hero, personalize them, and take them for a test drive.
There are now improved ways to watch Dota 2. DotaTV is expanding to include detailed stats and graphs. The streams will be capable of 1080p at 60fps and can be seen both in-game on and on the web. The list of live games will include a mix of tournament matches and matches your friends are playing in or watching. You can now also bookmark live matches to more easily access them later.
Valve is also introducing some new ways to get people interested in the game. They previously had tutorials but those apparently didn't really help newcomers understand why the game was fun. So they added in a "new system of Guided Bot Matches, which allows a new player to jump right in and experience a full Dota game, all the while receiving guidance from an AI director."
Whew! Next week, Valve will show off Custom Games. After that? I'm not sure, but there are three weeks of updates planned for this. Find out more about part one over at the Dota 2 website.