From Real-Time Data to Insights & Local Development with Kafka and Flink

Hello everyone! Join us for an Apache Kafka® x Apache Flink® meetup on July 31st from 5:30pm, in Melbourne!

The address, agenda, and speaker information can be found below. See you there!

📍Venue:
394 High Street Northcote, Victoria 3070

***
🗓 Agenda:

• 5:30pm: Doors open
• 5:30pm - 6:00pm: Pizza, Drinks, and Networking
• 6:00pm - 6:30pm: Olena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent
• 6:30pm - 7:00pm: Jaehyeon Kim, Developer Experience Engineer, Factor House
• 7:00pm - 7:30pm: Additional Networking

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

Talk:
The Art of Structuring Real-time Data Streams into Actionable Insights

Abstract:
Real-time data can be messy, unpredictable, and hard to manage. To unlock its full potential, you need a way to turn raw streams into clean, structured data. In this talk, we'll show you how to use Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, and Apache Iceberg to organize real-time data streams efficiently and prepare them for advanced use cases, including AI applications. We'll start by explaining how Kafka handles high-speed data streams and how Flink processes these streams in real time. You'll learn how to use Flink to transform raw data into structured formats, ensuring it's ready for storage and analysis. Then, we'll dive into Iceberg, demonstrating how it stores and organizes structured data for easy querying and visualizing. Through clear examples, we'll walk you through building a practical pipeline that turns chaotic data streams into organized structure. We'll also look how to use Model Context Protocol to use an LLM chatbot to talk directly to your data. By the end of the session, you'll know how to manage real-time data effectively and set the stage for downstream AI and analytics. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced developer, this talk will give you the tools to simplify and enhance your data pipelines!

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.
-----
💡 Speaker:
Jaehyeon Kim, Developer Experience Engineer, Factor House

Talk:
Hands-On Local Development: Kafka, Flink, Docker, and more.

Abstract:
Jae will present an introduction to a collection of open-source Docker environments designed to help you build and learn about modern data platforms.

This session is perfect for engineers interested in getting hands-on experience with Kafka, Flink, Spark, Iceberg, and Pinot, along with tools for management and observability.

We will also introduce a series of hands-on tutorials designed to guide you through building a complete, end-to-end data pipeline—from data ingestion with Kafka to real-time analytics and visualization.

***
If you would like to speak or host our next event please let us know! community@confluent.io