After 28 years as a developer, architect, project manager (recovered), author, trainer, conference organizer, and homeschooling dad, Dave Klein started his developer relations journey with the Apache Kafka community at Confluent. He then migrated downstream to the lake house with Tabular, helping developers merge the worlds of streaming and batch analytics on Apache Iceberg. Now he's found the sweet spot that really brings the power of streaming and batch together with Apache Druid, at Imply.

I first got involved in the Kafka community when I was trying to learn Kafka for a new job back in 2018. The people in this community made that learning journey much easier and way more fun! Soon after that I worked with the Confluent Community Team to organize a Kafka meetup in St. Louis, Missouri (USA). Next I spoke at my first Kafka Summit (online during the pandemic) and then began working at Confluent as a developer advocate. I've since moved on from Confluent but not from the Kafka Community! I am continually amazed at what the people in this community build and the way they support each other. I can't wait to see many of you at the next event!