Ben Watson is the Director of Training & Certification Products for Microsoft Learning, leading a team of product managers that set the vision and strategy for products worldwide including Microsoft Official Courseware, Academic Courseware, E-Learning, Microsoft Press books and Labs Online. In 2009 Microsoft Learning delivered more than 4 million days of classroom training and over 2 million technical and Office certification exams, reaching millions of learners worldwide.

Before Microsoft Ben Watson was the Vice President of Collaboration for Thomson NETg, responsible for their live learning web services including online instructor-led classes and a 24x7 mentoring service supporting their self-paced online courses. Prior to moving to the United States from Canada, Ben Watson was the founder and CEO of scholars.com, a company he started in 1995, which was a pioneer in offering online mentoring and tutor support for technical training. Scholars.com was later acquired by SkillSoft, the world’s largest e-Learning company. At SkillSoft he held a number of roles including Vice President of Customer Advocacy & Special Projects.

Ben Watson is participating in the Opening learning: new ambitions for higher education in a Web 2.0 world session.