Fresha Data Meetup: Sweet Streams Are Made of This

Join us on May 7th from 6:00pm for a Data Streaming meetup hosted by Fresha!

📍Venue:
Fresha
The Tower, 207 Old Street
London, EC1V 9NR
7th Floor

PLEASE bring your PHOTO ID and REGISTER with your First and Last Name, Email. Thanks!

DOORS CLOSE AT 7PM FOR SECURITY.

🗓 Agenda:

• 6:00pm – 6:30pm: Food/Drinks and Networking
• 6:30pm - 7:00pm: TBA Fresha
• 7:00pm - 7:30pm: Olena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent
• 7:30pm - 8:00pm: TBA
• 8:00pm - 9:00pm: Q&A Networking

💡Speaker One:
TBA Fresha

Title of Talk:
Abstract:
Bio:

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

Title of Talk:
The journey of a record from Kafka topic to analytics table

Abstract:
Modern data platforms increasingly rely on streaming systems like Apache Kafka as the source of truth—but turning event streams into reliable, queryable analytics tables is far from trivial.
This talk explores what really has to happen when moving data from a Kafka topic into an Apache Iceberg table.

Beyond simple ingestion, we will walk through the essential steps: schema evolution, data normalization, partitioning, exactly-once guarantees, late-arriving events, and table maintenance.

Using Confluent Tableflow as one concrete example, we will examine how these challenges can be addressed in practice. Along the way, we will compare alternative approaches—such as Kafka Connect sinks, stream processing pipelines, and custom ingestion frameworks—to highlight trade-offs in correctness, latency, and operational complexity.
The goal is not to promote a single solution, but to provide a mental model for designing robust streaming-to-lakehouse pipelines, helping you understand what matters regardless of the tooling you choose.

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.

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 Three: TBA
Title of Talk:
Abstract:
Bio:

***
If you are interested in hosting/speaking at a meetup, please email community@confluent.io