Chris Murphy has been with InformationWeek since 1999 covering IT leadership, and is editor of InformationWeek magazine. Before joining InformationWeek, he was editor of the Budapest Business Journal, a business weekly in Hungary. He also spent five years as a daily newspaper reporter in Michigan, for the Grand Rapids Press. Murphy holds a B.A. in journalism and economics from Michigan State University and an M.B.A. from the University of Virginia, and has passed the CFA exams.

Doug Allen is VP, Director of Information Technology at State Auto Insurance Companies based in Columbus Ohio. With more than 32 years experience in insurance technology, Allen has held a variety of IT based leadership roles at both the insurance company and agency management system levels.

Allen is a 1979 graduate of the Ohio State University with a degree in Computer Science. While at Ohio State, he was a member of the 1979 Ohio State Buckeye NCAA championship golf team. He also holds an Associate in research and planning designation from the Insurance Institute of America and has earned the competent toastmaster designation from Toastmasters International. Allen currently serves on the Columbus State Community College advisory committee and the Property and Casualty Insurance (PCI) Technology Committee.

Allen began his IT career with the State Auto Insurance Companies in 1979 where he has held a number of roles in the application development lifecycle including P&C, Life, billing, claims, and financial systems. In 1999, Allen was named the COO at Strategic Insurance Software (S.I.S.) at the time, a technology subsidiary of State Auto which develops and markets the PARTNER® agency management system to independent agents nationwide. Allen assumed his current role with State Auto in July 2004. State Auto has been recognized by the ACORD organization for their implementation of standards based solutions. In 2010, Allen was one of five CIO’s recognized by Tech Decisions magazine as top insurance IT executives.

State Auto Financial Corporation, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, is a super regional property and casualty insurance holding company. The company markets its personal and business insurance products exclusively through independent insurance agencies in 33 states and is proud to be a Trusted Choice® company partner. STFC stock is traded on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, which represents the top third of all NASDAQ listed companies. The company is one of NASDAQ’s listed companies to be named a 2007 Mergent Dividend Achiever for having increased its dividends for ten or more years in succession.

Mr. Bruce Barnes has over thirty-nine years of experience as a senior level officer in the technology arena, including very influential roles in Fortune 100 companies. He has received numerous industry accolades, including having been recognized as one of this country’s most noted CIOs. He is still a recognized voice at national industry events and in major industry publications.

Mr. Barnes is the founder and CEO of BOLD VISION®, a senior consulting consortium of “C Level” executives, focused on building an active and creative network of I/T leaders devoted to sharing best practices, leveraging their strengths and perspectives, and raising the level of technical “literacy” within their own organizations.

Prior to that, he served as VP of I/T Strategy and Planning for a $200B international insurance and financial services company, the Chief Information Officer for a public $100B international financial services company, and the Chief Information Officer for Ohio’s largest privately owned HMO.

Prior to that, he held various management positions with an international library/information services company, the Washington (DC) office of a major technology vendor, and as an officer in the United States Army.

He is a co-founder and on-going co-producer for the industry acclaimed “CIO Solutions Gallery©” series, which is nationally HQ’d out of The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.

Mr. Barnes also graduated from The Ohio State University, where he also now serves as an on-going Lecturer for the Fisher College in both its Executive MBA program and its undergraduate MIS and Accounting programs.

Ben is a nationally recognized IS Leader (ComputerWorld Premiere 100 2011) and is the founder of TechLife Columbus – a “grassroots tribe” to build connectivity and a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in Central Ohio. Ben also writes a blog chronicling the Columbus Tech community – www.techlifeohio.com. He also curator of the Columbus Startup Digest – www.startupdigest.com .

In his professional life Ben Blanquera provides strategic CIO consulting and was most recently the Vice President of Information Services for Progressive Medical, Inc . In this role  Ben was responsible for project/portfolio management, application development and business analysis. Prior to joining Progressive Medical in May 2006 Ben was the Director of the Columbus Technology Council (the predecessor of TechColumbus)  and was instrumental in leading the membership activities that led to increased retention, growth and  sustainability.

Born in the Philippines and raised in New Jersey Ben earned a bachelor’s degree  in mechanical engineering from Rutgers University and a Masters in Organizational development from Bowling Green State University. He is also PMP and six sigma certified.

Ben’s leadership roles span across both privately and publicly held firms. Ben has served as engineering manager for Manville Corporation, technical services manager for Soltech,, business engineering manager for Owens Corning, and Director at Integrex (a business incubator). He has held adjunct faculty position at Franklin University – MBA program and Keller Graduate School, and is a frequent conference speaker in the areas of leadership, project management, social media, and agile development.  In addition to his work responsibilities Ben has served on the boards of Clintonville - Beechwold community resource center, Women for Economic and Leadership Development, and has started several small businesses. He currently serves on the Advisory Council for Center of Science and Industry (COSI) and The GroundWork Group.

Ben resides in Dublin with his wife Sandy and four children Elizabeth, Emily, Allison, and Madison. In his free time Ben is an avid soccer coach/player, marathoner, and duathlon competitor. More info can be found at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/benblanquera.

John is the Executive Vice President for Quick Solutions (QSI). John is responsible for delivery, operations and expansion for QSI. QSI is an industry leading Information Technology and Solutions provider.

Prior to his position at QSI, John was the founder and national CEO of GroundWork group. GroundWork group is a 501c3 organization that teams with the nonprofit and funding community to help them maximize every charitable dollar donated by leveraging technology in a strategic manner. He has established himself as a technology leader in the for profit, nonprofit and funding communities.

Prior to his position at GroundWork group, John spent 20 years with Accenture, the recognized leading global IT consulting organization. His positions with Accenture included:

• Managing Partner of the Columbus office
• Managing Partner of the Ohio Government industry
• Global Managing Partner of the Education practice

During his tenure with Accenture, he developed leadership experience in implementing business process and information technology solutions and assisted in transforming organizations into best in class service delivery focusing on improving customer satisfaction, becoming more cost effective and establishing a business technology vision.

In addition to his CEO duties, John also provides Quality Assurance Project Management IT consulting services to several organizations including The Ohio State University and the University of Southern California.

John graduated from The Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a double major of MIS and Accounting.

John and his wife, Bobbi have three boys and live in Southern Delaware Ohio. They are very active in the community by being part of several volunteer organizations, boards of directors and community organizations. They have created the Hrusovsky/GroundWork group Internship Fund at Ohio State that creates technology internship opportunities for college students in the nonprofit field

Author, Executive Director and Dean - IT Leadership Academy

Thornton May is a futurist, educator and author. His extensive experience researching and consulting on the role and behaviors of “C” level executives in creating value with information technology has won him an unquestioned place on the short list of serious thinkers on this topic. Thornton combines a scholar’s patience for empirical research, a stand-up comic’s capacity for pattern recognition and a second-to-none gift for storytelling to address the information technology management problems facing executives. The editors at eWeek honored Thornton, including him on their list of Top 100 Most Influential People in IT.

Thornton has established a reputation for innovation in time-compressed, collaborative problem solving. Thornton designs the curriculum that enables the mental models that allow organizations to outperform competitors, delight customers and extract maximum value from tools and suppliers. He serves as: Executive Director and Dean at the IT Leadership Academy in Jacksonville, Florida; Futurist - External Technology Advisory Board at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering; and Co-founder of the CIO Solutions Gallery at the Fisher College of Business [the Ohio State University] where he also teaches the MIS program for eMBAs.

Thornton’s insights have appeared in the Harvard Business Review (on IT strategy); The Financial Times (on IT value creation); The Wall Street Journal (on the future of the computer industry); the M.I.T. Sloan Management Review (on the future of marketing), American Demographics (on the evolving demographics of Electronic Commerce), USA Today (on the future of the consumer electronics industry), Business Week (on the future of CEO direct reports) and on National Public Radio (debating the future practice of strategy with Professor Michael Porter). Thornton is a columnist at Computerworld and has served as an Advisor to the Founding Editors of Fast Company Magazine.

Thornton’s research has been acknowledged in such seminal business books as Seth Godin's Permission Marketing; Michael Schrage's Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate; Moshe Rubenstein's The Minding Organization; Bill Jensen's Simplicity; and Jeff Williams' Renewable Advantage: Crafting Strategy Through Economic Time.

Thornton has recently written a new book, The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics.

Thornton obtained his bachelor’s degree in Asian Studies from Dartmouth College; his master’s degree in Industrial Administration from Carnegie-Mellon University, and developed his Japanese language competence at the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan and Keio University in Japan.

MIT Sloan School's Center for Information Systems Research

Jeanne W. Ross is Director and Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School's Center for Information Systems Research where she lectures, conducts research, and directs executive education courses on IT management practices. Her research examines organizational and performance implications of enterprise initiatives related to enterprise architecture, IT governance, outsourcing, and business agility. Her work has appeared in major practitioner and academic journals, including Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, MISQ Executive, MIS Quarterly, the Journal of Management Information Systems, IBM Systems Journal, and CIO Magazine.

Jeanne has served on the faculty of customized courses for firms such as PepsiCo, McKinsey, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, TRW, Pfizer, Nomura, Novartis, News Corporation, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, IBM, and Credit Suisse. She regularly appears as a speaker for Microsoft, the Society for Information Management, Gartner, and university research centers, where she addresses the question of how companies get value from information technology.

She is coauthor of two books: IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results and Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution through Harvard Business School Press. Her third book, IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain will be published in late 2008.

Jeanne earned a B.A. at the University of Illinois, an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is a founding senior editor and serves as editor in chief of MIS Quarterly Executive.