Kafka Meetup Utrecht

Hi all,

We are excited to bring the Kafka community together once again for a new Kafka meetup. On January 20th, 2026, we will host an in - person evening featuring three strong perspectives on Kafka: MCP in practice - from intent to streaming; Kafka-native Kroxylicious proxies; and the organizational realities of Event-Driven Architecture.

The Speakers:

We are very excited to welcome Anatoly Zelenin (Founder @ DataFlow Academy, Kafka book author) introducing Kroxylicious, an emerging open-source early stage Kafka proxy.

We are also proud to feature our own Abhinav Sonkar (Software Engineer @Axual.com), who will present a hands-on talk on MCP and Kafka in practice.

Finally, Eti (Dahan) Noked (Head of Engineering @ PX.com) will close the evening with an honest look at Event-Driven Architecture: the dream, the reality, and the organizational cost.

Agenda:

Doors open: 17:30
17:30 - 18:30: Networking, food & drinks

18:30 – 19:00: “From Intent to Streaming Apps: MCP in Practice with Kafka” by Abhinav Sonkar (Software Engineer @ Axual)

19:05 – 19:50: “Kroxylicious, the snappy open-source proxy for Apache Kafka” by Anatoly Zelenin (Founder @ DataFlow Academy, Kafka book author)

20:00 – 20:30: “Kafka & Event-Driven Architecture: The Dream, the Reality, and the Organizational Cost” by Eti (Dahan) Noked (Head of Engineering @ PX.com)

20:30 - 21:15: Drinks & Kafka chit-chat

Abstracts:

From Intent to Streaming Apps: MCP in Practice with Kafka
As AI assistants begin interacting with real infrastructure, a key challenge is ensuring those interactions are safe, reliable, and constrained by clear rules. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) addresses this by defining a structured way for AI systems to discover capabilities, understand context, and invoke external tools through explicit contracts.
This talk presents MCP through a practical Kafka-focused case study. Using the Axual MCP server, Abhinav will demonstrate how high-level intent expressed in natural language can be translated into governed Kafka operations such as topic management, access control, and application deployment. The session will also show how MCP can be combined with declarative technologies like KSML, a YAML-based DSL for Kafka Streams, to generate and deploy streaming applications without writing Java code.

Kroxylicious, the snappy open-source proxy for Apache Kafka
Proxies are a powerful architectural pattern commonly used in other application-layer protocols like HTTP, but they remain underutilized in the Kafka ecosystem. Kroxylicious is a groundbreaking, early-stage project that aims to change this by making it easier to develop Kafka proxies with minimal effort.
While some organizations have built their own Kafka-aware proxies to address specific challenges, these solutions often remain closed-source and highly specialized. Kroxylicious tackles this problem by offering a set of pre-built capabilities and common features out-of-the-box, enabling developers to concentrate on the custom logic their applications need.
In this session, Anatoly will introduce Kroxylicious, highlight its potential use cases, and demonstrate how it can simplify Kafka proxy development, reduce complexity, and unlock new possibilities for real-time data processing.

Kafka & Event-Driven Architecture: The Dream, the Reality, and the Organizational Cost
The goal of this talk is to show how to use Kafka effectively to achieve Event-Driven Architecture, and what this means for an organization. Eti will cover when an organization is ready for EDA, when Kafka is the right choice, and when it might not be.
The talk completes the picture by exploring what can go wrong, how to avoid common pitfalls, and how architectural decisions around Kafka and EDA affect organizational structure, team ownership, and long-term sustainability.

Location:
Axual HQ
Jaarbeursplein 22, Utrecht
Please RSVP so we can arrange enough food & drinks.
We are looking forward to welcoming you again on January 20th, 2026.
Team Kafka Meetup Utrecht