IN-PERSON: Data Streaming Meetup

Join us for an IN-PERSON Data Streaming meetup on Tuesday, March 3 from 6:00pm hosted by Improving!

Venue:
Improving
11675 Rainwater Dr #100, Alpharetta, GA 30009

Agenda:

• 6:00pm: Doors open
• 6:00pm - 6:30pm: Food, drinks and networking
• 6:30pm -7:00pm: Olena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent
• 7:00pm - 7:30pm: Jemiah Sius, VP Market Strategy & DevRel, New Relic
• 7:30pm-8:00pm: Viktor Gamov, Principal Developer Advocate, Confluent
• 8:00pm-8:30pm: Additional Q&A & Networking

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

Title of Talk:
Keeping data private in real-time pipelines

Abstract:
We all love real-time data — clicks, payments, rides, messages — but most of it comes with a catch: it contains personal information we’re not supposed to leak, such as names, emails, locations, or even small clues that can identify someone. The challenge: how do we keep streaming data useful and safe at the same time?

In this talk, we’ll explore practical ways to protect privacy in streaming systems using Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, and Apache Iceberg. We’ll cover:
- simple tricks like masking and tokenizing PII;
- why “anonymous” data often isn’t anonymous (the re-identification problem);
- techniques like bucketing, k-anonymity, and adding noise;
- how to balance privacy with data utility (too much hiding makes data useless).

Along the way, we’ll look at real-world stories: from public data leaks to surprising deanonymization attacks, and show live demos of pipelines that anonymize data before it’s written to storage.
If you’ve ever wondered how to build privacy-aware pipelines, this talk will give you practical patterns you can use right away.

Bio:
Olena Kutsenko 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:**
Jemiah Sius, VP Market Strategy & DevRel, New Relic

Title of Talk:
Tracing Apache Kafka with OpenTelemetry

Abstract:
Ideally, you should be using distributed tracing to trace requests through your system, but Kafka decouples producers and consumers, which means there are no direct transactions to trace between them. Kafka also uses asynchronous processes, which have implicit, rather than explicit, dependencies. This makes it challenging to understand how your microservices are working together.

However, it is possible to monitor your Kafka clusters with distributed tracing and OpenTelemetry. You can then analyze and visualize your traces in an open-source distributed tracing tool like Jaeger or a full observability platform like New Relic. In this talk, I will leverage a simple application to demonstrate how you can achieve this.

Bio:
Companies have turned to Jemiah Sius to develop complex customer enablement workflows that drive customer success and platform adoption.

Jemiah Sius serves as the Vice President of Market Strategy within New Relic's Marketing organization. With a strong focus on improving developer enablement and advocating for the importance of maintaining reliable software systems, Jemiah's work includes:

- Scaling developer engagement programs and partnerships
- Developing open-source applications and code examples
- Creating technical content and documentation

Jemiah states, "The success of any software company relies on its customers adopting the product and quickly finding value in it. By concentrating on user pain points, we place them at the center of our innovation within the organization, platform, and enablement strategy, making it easier for engineers to address their most significant challenges.”

Outside of work, Jemiah is a proud girl dad and a technology, art, and sneaker enthusiast. As a member of the Smile Trust's managing board, he has played a key role in helping the nonprofit organization provide healthy meals, clothing, and resources to over 750,000 people over the past ten years. dad, and a giant nerd about all things tech, art, and sneakers. With Jemiah's seat on Smile Trust's managing board, he has helped the nonprofit organization provide healthy meals, clothing, and resources to over 750,000 people over the last nine years.

** Speaker Three:**
Viktor Gamov, Principal Developer Advocate, Confluent

Title of Talk: TBA

Abstract: TBA

Bio:
Viktor Gamov is a Principal Developer Advocate at Confluent, founded by the original creators of Apache Kafka®. With a rich background in implementing and advocating for distributed systems and cloud-native architectures, Viktor excels in open-source technologies. He is passionate about assisting architects, developers, and operators in crafting systems that are not only low in latency and scalable but also highly available.

As a Java Champion and an esteemed speaker, Viktor is known for his insightful presentations at top industry events like JavaOne, Devoxx, Kafka Summit, and QCon. His expertise spans distributed systems, real-time data streaming, JVM, and DevOps.

Viktor has co-authored "Enterprise Web Development" from O'Reilly and "Apache Kafka® in Action" from Manning.

Follow Viktor on X - @gamussa to stay updated with Viktor's latest thoughts on technology, his gym and food adventures, and insights into open-source and developer advocacy.

***
DISCLAIMER
We do not cater to those under the age of 21.
If you would like to speak or host our next event please let us know! community@confluent.io