Did you miss SXSW? No matter, Harper Reedâs coming to London town

He’s the former hacker turned tech engineer who made a name for himself building a huge data platform for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Since then he’s been in demand on the international circuit talking about how he worked out how to get Obama to speak one-to-one with tens of millions of voters in ways that have never been achieved before. In early March he was wowing audiences at SXSW, and in April he'll be making his first live appearance in London at the DMA's Technology Summit.

In case you don’t already know the story, it’s pretty impressive. Harper assembled a team of developers from Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter to produce a data platform codenamed ‘Narwhal’ to give the President the edge over his rival, Mitt Romney. In total the campaign raised $1bn in donations from 4.4 million donors, including $690m online. Narwhal helped create a social network for supporters who organised 358,000 events, made 125,646,575 campaigning phone calls, and mobilised 600,000 Facebook fans to recruit five million more active users to support the campaign. Sophisticated TV audience modelling helped to buy 20,000 more TV ads than Romney’s campaign for $100m less.

Until now, no one’s attempted to do what Harper and his team managed to pull off. In a world that’s now driven by data, Harper’s quickly become the go-to guy for understanding how to make sense of huge chunks of data and help politicians and brands connect one-to-one with millions of people. Obama was the first to hug Harper in gratitude for helping him get back into the White House. In a time populated by countless self-appointed tech gurus, the DMA Technology Summit is going to be a great chance for UK brand communicators to meet a bona fide visionary.