Speaker
Asheesh Birla
Thomson Learning
Asheesh Birla currently is the Executive Director, Strategic Content Technology at the Thomson Corporation located in Belmont CA. Asheesh has been working towards transforming Thomson’s print publishing business to a custom and electronic publishing business through partnerships and the use of open source tools, XML, metadata, and advanced content management solutions. Asheesh has been a key player in developing Thomson electronic solutions for business partners through partnerships with 3rd-party partners and content service providers primarily based in Asia. Additionally, Asheesh also serves as a business development expert on new open-web, Web 2.0 and Semantic Web enabled business models for the publishing industry in general. Prior to joining Thomson, Asheesh founded idea2net, inc and its offshore subsidiary. idea2net, inc provided electronic publishing services to the financial, insurance, automotive and retail industries. Asheesh is a graduate of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where he studied Economics and Computer Science.