Get Kafka-Nated Episode 9

Aiven

Dec 10, 2025

Join host Hugh Evans for a high-energy hour of rapid-fire conversations with experts shaping the future of streaming data. Broadcasting directly from Current 2025 in New Orleans, this episode packs six lightning interviews into one hour, mixing deep technical insights with a few fun surprises along the way.

Guests include Olena Kutsenko (Confluent), Ben Gamble (Ververica), Alex Merced (Dremio), Sion Smith (OSO), Zander Matheson (ex-ByteWax, Confluent), Hojjat Jafarpour (DeltaStream), and Tom Scott (Streambased).

Expect real-world streaming lessons and “war stories,” hot takes on Kafka, Flink, Iceberg & beyond, insights into the myths, challenges, and breakthroughs defining modern data streaming, plus a few laughs and lightning-round debates ("Kafka or Pulsar?" anyone?).

Timestamps:

00:00 – Welcome & Introduction

02:10 – Overview: What “Live from Current (New Orleans)” is about

05:25 – Key announcements / Agenda for the session

10:40 – Discussion: Trends in Streaming and Kafka Use Cases

18:55 – Deep dive: Real‑world Multi‑Cloud Streaming Infrastructure

26:30 – Panel / Guest segment / Q&A with speakers

35:00 – Lessons learned & Best practices (scaling, reliability, cost)

42:45 – What’s next for Aiven & Kafka — Roadmap & Upcoming Features

49:30 – Closing remarks & How to get involved

Useful links:
Learn more about Aiven Diskless Kafka: https://aiven.io/kafka/diskless
Explore the Aiven platform for Apache Kafka and other open-source services: https://aiven.io
Watch the previous episode of Get Kafka-Nated: https://youtu.be/nWBghkTxC5U

#apachekafka #datastreaming #eventstreaming #aiven #streamingdata

Connect With Us
Website: http://aiven.io
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aiven/
GitHub: https://github.com/aiven
X: https://twitter.com/aiven_io