The chief technology officer behind US president Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign – and expert hacker – will be the keynote speaker at CeBIT Australia 2013.

Harper Reed is the second set of brains behind Obama’s re-election campaign coming to our shores this year. Last week, ADMA announced that Rayid Ghani, the chief scientist in data and analytics for Obama’s campaign, will speak at its Global Forum in Sydney in August.

Describing himself as “an engineer excited about real time, social software and the open source software movement”, Reed (pictured) built the back-technology that enabled hundreds of thousands of Obama volunteers to reach out to voters.

Jackie Taranto, managing director of CeBIT Australia organizer Hannover Fairs Australia, said: “Harper Reed’s approach to managing big data and cloud has seen him recognised as the technology mastermind behind the Obama win, and we look forward to him adding real world examples of how data is one of your business’ most valuable assets.”