IN PERSON! Apache Kafka® Meetup (Oct 2025)

Hello everyone! Join us for an Apache Kafka® meetup on Oct 9th from 5:30PM, hosted by intelia in Melbourne!

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

📍Venue:
intelia
L3, 31 Queen St, Melbourne 3000

IMPORTANT:
Please note that for security purposes, all attendees are required to sign in at the lobby to get into the building.

***
🗓 Agenda:

• 5:30pm: Doors open
• 5:30pm - 6:00pm: Pizza, Drinks, and Networking
• 6:00pm - 6:30pm: Chen Guo, Senior Software Engineer, Tabcorp
• 6:30pm - 7:00pm: Warren Vella, Senior Solutions Engineer, Confluent
• 7:00pm - 7:30pm: Additional Q&A & Networking

***
💡 Speaker:
Chen Guo, Senior Software Engineer, Tabcorp

Bio:
Chen Guo is a senior software engineer working in the Financial Crime team at Tabcorp, where he helps design and build real-time data pipelines using Kafka and Spark to process high-volume transactions. This work enables to stop suspicious activity in real time.

Talk:
Flexible Kafka Deserialization: Schema Registry vs. Manual Evolution

Abstract:
In an ideal setup, Kafka topic schemas are well-defined, new schemas remain compatible, and client schema configurations are always up to date.
However, real-world scenarios often involve challenges such as missing keys, incompatible schemas, or insufficient throughput.
We believe that the limitations are a direct consequence of the tight coupling between the code and the Kafka schema..

To address this, we propose a more flexible approach: consuming Kafka messages as Array[Byte] and deserializing them into case classes or GenericRecord as needed.
This presentation will explore how Kafka Schema Registry can be leveraged for flexible deserialization, and also discuss an alternative that removes the dependency on Schema Registry—significantly boosting throughput.
The trade-off is that schema evolution must be managed manually, but the performance gains can be substantial, with throughput nearly doubling.a

---
💡 Speaker:
Warren Vella, Senior Solutions Engineer, Confluent

Bio:
Warren Vella is obsessed with integration, which started off as a 13-year adventure at the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), where he supported and architected critical energy market integration platforms. After moving from operations into enterprise architecture, he joined Confluent as a Solutions Engineer, helping customers solve their integration challenges.
Warren has worked on various platforms like API Gateways, ETLs, ESBs, Message Queues, iPaaS and Data Streaming Platforms. His mission? To educate the world on removing the bottleneck of integration.

Talk:
What’s New in Kafka 4.0 & 4.1

Abstract:
Kafka 4.0 and 4.1 mark a major milestone making Kafka faster and easier than ever. Join us for a hands-on look at the biggest updates, with a live demo on new features you can use immediately.

***
DISCLAIMER
BY ATTENDING THIS EVENT IN PERSON, you acknowledge that risk includes possible exposure to and illness from infectious diseases including COVID-19, and accept responsibility for this, if it occurs.
NOTE: We are unable to cater for any attendees under the age of 18.

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