Name: IN-PERSON: Kong x Apache Kafka® Meetup Helsinki
Start: 2025-06-02T17:30:00+03:00
End: 2025-06-02T20:30:00+03:00
Location: Aalto Auditorium

We are thrilled to invite you for our first ever in-person Meetup in Helsinki in collaboration with an Apache Kafka®!

**When**
June 2, 17:30 - 20:30

**Where**
Aalto Auditorium
Runeberginkatu 1, 00100 Helsinki, Finland

**Agenda:**
17:30 - 18:30 Networking, Food/Drinks
18:30 - 19:00 [Talk 1] Extending the worlds most used API platform to Kafka -- Why it matters, what's here today, what's coming and how to learn more by Johannes Brännström (Staff Solutions Engineer, Kong)
19:00 - 19:30 [Talk 2] Unlock full end-to-end tracing through Kong and Kafka with OpenTelemetry by Harry Kimpel (Principal Developer Relations Engineer, New Relic)
19:30 - 20:00 Additional Q&A, Networking
20:00 - 20:30 Doors Close (*feel free to continue networking nearby at a local pub etc!)*

**Talks**
*1) Extending the worlds most used API platform to Kafka -- Why it matters, what's here today, what's coming and how to learn more.*

In this talk, we’ll explore how Kong facilitates the way Kafka users interact with both synchronous and asynchronous APIs. Through the lens of example companies, we'll demo how Kong helps manage and optimize their API ecosystems, balancing the needs for real-time event streaming with traditional API patterns. Attendees will gain an understanding of Kong’s current capabilities for Kafka integration, highlighting key features that enable smooth API management, enhanced scalability, and reliability. We'll also offer ways for you to get first-hand experience. Looking ahead, we’ll share exciting developments on the horizon, including upcoming features, enhancements that will further empower Kafka users as well as learn more.

*2) Unlock full end-to-end tracing through Kong and Kafka with OpenTelemetry*

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, not explicit, dependencies. Another key component of such an architecture is securing and exposing endpoints with a powerful platform such as Kong. All of this makes it challenging to understand how your microservices are working together.

However, it is possible to observe your Kong Gateway interactions and Kafka-based applications 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 show how you can achieve this.

**Speakers**
*Johannes Brännström, Staff Solutions Engineer, Kong*
Joining Kong from MongoDB & Red Hat Johannes is passionate about agile, modern application architecture and continuous delivery in all areas required to build great software.

*Harry Kimpel, Principal Developer Relations Engineer, New Relic*
Passionate software craftsman with 25+ years experience in a broad spectrum of development technologies and platforms. Mostly focusing on .NET/C#, the Microsoft development stack and cloud-native software architectures. Key focus also on Microsoft Azure as well as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Observability, monitoring and securing these environments are key aspects. Currently extremely interested in the Distributed Application Runtime (Dapr).

See you there!
Kong Community Team

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IN-PERSON: Kong x Apache Kafka® Meetup Helsinki

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