A well-written abstract is your ticket to conferences, but how do you write an excellent synopsis that will get accepted? As an experienced conference speaker, Robin Moffatt (Principal Developer Advocate, Confluent) often writes presentations that help the developer community to understand Apache Kafka and its ecosystem. He is also the Program Committee Chair for Kafka Summit and Current 2022: The Next Generation of Kafka Summit. Having seen hundreds of conference submissions, Robin shares best practices for crafting abstracts that stand out, as well as tips for speaking at conferences.

What is a developer advocate and how do you become one? In this episode, we have seasoned developer advocates, Kris Jenkins (Senior Developer Advocate, Confluent) and Danica Fine (Senior Developer Advocate, Confluent) answer the question by diving into how they got into the world of developer relations, what they enjoyed the most about their roles, and how you can become one.

Data mesh isn’t software you can download and install, so how do you build a data mesh? In this episode, Adam Bellemare (Staff Technologist, Office of the CTO, Confluent) discusses his data mesh proof of concept and how it can help you conceptualize the ways in which implementing a data mesh could benefit your organization.

Stream processing can be hard or easy depending on the approach you take, and the tools you choose. This sentiment is at the heart of the discussion with Matthias J. Sax (Apache Kafka PMC member; Software Engineer, ksqlDB and Kafka Streams, Confluent) and Jeff Bean (Sr. Technical Marketing Manager, Confluent). With immense collective experience in Kafka, ksqlDB, Kafka Streams, and Apache Flink, they delve into the types of stream processing operations and explain the different ways of solving for their respective issues.

Apache Kafka isn’t just for day jobs according to Danica Fine (Senior Developer Advocate, Confluent). It can be used to make life easier at home, too! Building out a practical Apache Kafka® data pipeline is not always complicated—it can be simple and fun. For Danica, the idea of building a Kafka-based data pipeline sprouted with the need to monitor the water level of her plants at home. In this episode, she explains the architecture of her hardware-oriented project and discusses how she integrates, processes, and enriches data using ksqlDB and Kafka Connect, a Raspberry Pi running Confluent's Python client, and a Telegram bot. Apart from the script on the Raspberry Pi, the entire project was coded within Confluent Cloud.