Bern Apache Kafka® Meetup By Confluent

Join us for an Apache Kafka® meetup on Thursday, May 8th from 5:00pm in Bern hosted by Swiss Post!

📍Venue:
Swiss Post, Wankdorfallee 4, 3014 Bern, Switzerland

🗓 Agenda:

• 5:00pm: Doors open
• 5:00pm – 5:30pm: Food, drinks, networking
• 5:30pm – 6:00pm: David Jacot, Staff Software Engineer II, Confluent
• 6:00pm - 6:30pm: Sammy Ramareddy, Swisscom
• 6:30pm - 7:00pm: Senad Jukic, Staff Solutions Engineer, Confluent
• 7:00pm - 7:30pm: Additional Q&A & Networking

💡 Speaker One:
David Jacot, Staff Software Engineer II, Confluent

Title of Talk:
No More Pauses: Apache Kafka’s New Consumer Rebalance Protocol in Action

Abstract:
The consumer rebalance protocol in Apache Kafka has long been a source of frustration—slow, disruptive, and prone to downtime. With Apache Kafka 4.0, a new generation of rebalancing has arrived, designed for speed, flexibility, and continuous availability. In this 30-minute talk, we’ll walk through live demos that highlight the evolution of rebalancing in Kafka: from the limitations of eager and cooperative modes to the streamlined performance of the new protocol (KIP-848). You’ll see how it enables seamless scaling, faster failure recovery, and uninterrupted message processing. Whether you're powering mission-critical streaming apps or building elastic data systems, this upgrade is worth your attention.

Bio:
David Jacot is a staff engineer on the Kafka team at Confluent, where he works on building the foundations of the next-generation, cloud-native event streaming platform. He is an Apache Kafka Committer and a member of the Apache Kafka Program Management Committee (PMC).

💡 Speaker Two:
Sammy Ramareddy, Swisscom

Title of Talk:
Swisscom One Data Platform : a multi-year journey through the lens of Apache Kafka

Abstract:
Swisscom has been using Apache Kafka for many years to power a multitude of analytics and operational use-cases, from POCs to highly critical applications.

Over the years, Swisscom’s toolbox to deal with data kept evolving and multiple technologies were used. Despite the natural evolution related to a fast-paced data world and a scale 50 times bigger, there is one constant in the stack: Apache Kafka.
In this talk, we will discuss how our Kafka platform has evolved, the learnings we made while building enterprise data platforms and share insights about One Data Platform, the latest evolution of Swisscom’s self-service internal platform.

Bio:
Sammy Ramareddy is currently Director of Architecture for Data Analytics & AI at Swisscom, where he spearheads innovative solutions that empower the company to transform data into strategic business value.

He has a passion to devise elegant technical solutions that solve complex problems and deliver impactful value. You’ll likely find him starting his morning with a coffee reviewing pull requests or crafting presentations, afternoon engaged in a brainstorming session in front of a whiteboard, and evening exploring the latest tech book, refining his homelab or enjoying family time.

💡 Speaker Three:
Senad Jukic, Staff Solutions Engineer, Confluent

Title of Talk:
Apache Kafka® x VS Code

Abstract:
This presentation introduces two powerful tools that streamline Apache Kafka development and operations. First, we'll explore the Confluent-developed VS Code plugin—a free, open-source extension that enhances the Kafka development experience through visual tooling. We'll demonstrate key features, including topic management, schema registry integration, and real-time message monitoring directly within your IDE.

The second part introduces Kafka MCP Server, a revolutionary natural language interface for Kafka cluster management. This tool allows operators and developers to interact with their Kafka infrastructure using simple conversational prompts. Instead of writing complex commands or scripts, users can ask questions like "How many topics do I have?" and receive immediate answers. We'll showcase how this tool simplifies cluster monitoring, troubleshooting, and administration while reducing the learning curve for new Kafka users.

Join us to discover how these tools can transform your Kafka workflow, making development more efficient and cluster management more intuitive.

Bio:
Senad Jukic is a Staff Solutions Engineer at Confluent, specializing in event-driven architectures, cloud implementations, and AI/ML systems integration. With experience across major cloud providers, he has successfully onboarded over 30 enterprise customers and delivered high-critical Kafka implementations. Senad is passionate about solving complex real-time data challenges and making powerful streaming technologies accessible to organizations. Before Confluent, he built his expertise in cloud architecture at SAS and held technical roles at FactSet and Cembra Money Bank. When not designing streaming architectures, you'll likely find him conducting technical workshops, developing solution patterns for cloud integrations, or exploring new ways to leverage Kafka with emerging AI technologies.