Memphis Data Professionals

Event-Driven Design with Kafka: Patterns, Pitfalls & Practical Strategy
About the Speaker – Joey Brown
Joey Brown is a passionate Fullstack Developer and Software Engineer with hands-on experience in designing and scaling distributed solutions—including both Kafka-powered and Kafka-free architectures. Currently at Heroku, Joey focuses on creating powerful developer tools that streamline how software is built, tested, and deployed in the cloud.
What to Expect from This Session
This one-hour, no-frills technical session is designed to help engineers, architects, and tech leaders make four critical judgments around Kafka:

• When Kafka unlocks real architectural value—and when it's overkill
• Key architectural patterns that drive success with event-driven systems
• Common pitfalls and engineering anti-patterns in streaming designs
• Decision frameworks informed by real-world deployments across industries

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Why This Matters
Kafka can transform your streaming data and microservices—but not all systems need it. This talk helps you:

• Build architectures smartly—not just boldly
• Avoid wasted effort on overly complex systems
• Push back on Kafka “because everyone else does” with grounded reasoning
• Learn from successes—and failures—in real production environments

Who Should Attend?
This event is ideal for:

• CPA – looking to better understand current technology
• Software Engineers & Technical Architects
• DevOps / Platform Engineers
• CTOs, Engineering Managers & Tech Leads
• Anyone curious about distributed systems, event-driven strategies, or Kafka's practical application

Secure Your Spot
Free to attend
Limited seating
Networking begins at 5:30 PM
Join Memphis’ tech community at the FedEx Institute of Technology for a session that just might change how you architect systems—no hype, just smart design.