In terms of feedback, to me by far the most important improvement to be made in the process is communication. I've found the disorganization and lack of communication around the qualifier events to be very frustrating...with no centralized source of information of qualifying tournaments, spotty announcements if any about when and where they are held, and no page for potential organizers of events.
By far the biggest improvement in my mind would be a decently run website that acts as an information source for both players and tournament sponsors. Beyond that, I'd suggest requiring all events to be scheduled (as in having a date set, not actually holding the event) by a certain period of time (say 6 months) before the overall championship. Although this might somewhat reduce the number events, it would allow a fixed schedule of qualifying events to be published, which would be a major improvement over what we had this year.
I would just like to echo Toaster's comments here.
I was at Origins this year and played a casual game or two of Dominion at the Rio Grande Games area, and saw no notice for a tournament/qualifier event (although someone said that there was one there...). Nor did I see one in the program book for the convention.
I'll take another look at the program book just to make sure, but I'm sure I didn't see anything... ::shrug::
I was just told about the Chicago qualifier (in April) this past Saturday... heh...