Copenhagen Apache Kafka® Meetup by Confluent

Join us for a Kafka meetup on Thursday, September 11th from 6:00pm in Copenhagen hosted by Nine A/S!

📍Venue:
Nine A/S Office
Kongens Nytorv 18
DK-1050 København K

🗓 Agenda:

• 6:00pm: Doors open
• 6:00pm – 6:30pm: Food/Drinks and networking
• 6:30pm - 7:15pm: Olena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent
• 7:15pm - 8:00pm: Tom Scott, Founder & CEO, Streambased
• 8:00pm - 9:00pm: Additional Q&A and Networking

💡 Speaker One:
Olena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent

Title of Talk:
The art of structuring real-time data streams into actionable insights

Abstract:
Real-time data is fast, messy, and often unpredictable - making it hard to use effectively. To unlock its full potential, we need to turn raw streams into clean, structured data that's ready for analysis and AI. In this talk, we’ll show how Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, and Apache Iceberg work together to tame real-time data and prepare it for advanced use cases.

We’ll start by showing how Kafka handles high-throughput data ingestion and how Flink processes and transforms these streams in real time. You’ll learn how to use Flink to clean and structure data on the fly, making it ready for storage and querying. Then, we’ll explore how Apache Iceberg stores this data in an efficient, queryable format - paving the way for analytics, dashboards, and ML pipelines.

We’ll also introduce the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and demonstrate how it enables a large language model (LLM) to “talk” to your data - making it possible to ask questions in natural language through a chatbot interface. While this technology is still evolving, it's a major step toward reducing friction in accessing critical business insights.

Using three live demos - based on IoT sensors, social media streams, and product orders - we’ll walk through how to build a real-time data pipeline from raw input to structured output. By the end of the session, you’ll have a clear blueprint for managing real-time data effectively and preparing it for AI and analytics use cases. Whether you’re just getting started or already building modern data pipelines, this talk will give you practical tools and ideas you can use right away.

Bio:
Olena is a Staff Developer Advocate at Confluent and a recognized expert in data streaming and analytics. With two decades of experience in software engineering, she has built mission-critical applications, led high-performing teams, and driven large-scale technology adoption at industry leaders like Nokia, HERE Technologies, AWS, and Aiven.

A passionate advocate for real-time data processing and AI-driven applications, Olena empowers developers and organizations to use the power of streaming data. She is an AWS Community Builder, a dedicated mentor, and a volunteer instructor at a nonprofit tech school, helping to shape the next generation of engineers.

As an international speaker and thought leader, Olena regularly presents at top global conferences, sharing deep technical insights and hands-on expertise. Whether through her talks, workshops, or content, she is committed to making complex technologies accessible and inspiring innovation in the developer community.

💡 Speaker Two:
Tom Scott, Founder & CEO, Streambased

Title of Talk:
Why Kafka + Iceberg Will Define the Next Decade of Data Infrastructure

Abstract:
Data leaders today face a familiar challenge: complex pipelines, duplicated systems, and spiraling infrastructure costs. Standardizing around Kafka for real-time and Iceberg for large-scale analytics has gone some way towards addressing this but still requires separate stacks, leaving teams to stitch them together at high expense and risk.

This talk will explore how Kafka and Iceberg together form a new foundation for data infrastructure. One that unifies streaming and analytics into a single, cost-efficient layer. By standardizing on these open technologies, organizations can reduce data duplication, simplify governance, and unlock both instant insights and long-term value from the same platform.

You will come away with a clear understanding of why this convergence is reshaping the industry, how it lowers operational risk, and advantages it offers for building durable, future-proof data capabilities.

Bio:
Long time enthusiast of Kafka and all things data integration, Tom has more than 15yrs experience in innovative and efficient ways to store, query and move data. Tom is currently CEO at Streambased a company focused on unifying operational and analytical data estates into a single, consistent and efficient data layer.