An Inside Look at Data Streaming, Live in D.C.

Last week’s D.C. stop on #DataInMotionTour 2023 was standing room only – making it the second year in a row that the DMV has had the most attended event on the North America tour. (Thus far – the tour’s not over just yet!)

Confluent Field CTO Will LaForest opened the event by introducing the tour’s theme: Reinventing Kafka in the Data Streaming Era.?

He walked attendees through how #ApacheKafka has ushered in this era – transforming how we travel, invest, bank, and even buy groceries. Now, however, companies need a more complete #datastreaming platform: one that allows them to not only store, connect, and process data but also democratize data access and implement governance.

Will explained how leveraging these five capabilities have been key for Confluent’s most successful customers. Even in highly regulated industries like the public sector, healthcare, and financial services, organizations are building architectures that put them on the path to creating a “central nervous system” with data streaming.?

Attendees got an idea of what this looks like in practice with A Peek Into the Tech Powering 10x Banking’s SuperCore? Platform.

How Regulated Industries Are Implementing Data Streaming

During his keynote speech, Will encouraged attendees to take advantage of the wealth of tech and data streaming knowledge in the room.?

He said, “There’a real sense of community because you get to connect and ask questions with your peers. These events allow you to meet people doing really interesting things across a wide range of exciting use cases. And because we’re in the D.C. area, a lot of the people attending are using data streaming to reimagine customer experience, situational awareness, cybersecurity, and much more.”

Next, Will moderated a fireside chat and Q&A with technology leaders from companies in healthcare and the public sector. The speakers shared how they’re using Confluent Cloud to accelerate cloud adoption and build better customer experiences.?

The audience came ready to dive into the technical details, asking:

• How capable is Confluent Cloud for different scenarios – have you faced any challenges when the level of complexity increases?
• How has using a serverless architecture helped you save money when implementing data streaming in new areas?
• When you think about things like connectors, ksqlDB, and other tools in the Confluent ecosystem, what was the single piece that you’ve used that’s brought the most value to your organization?
• When pulling data to downstream systems, are you having to build large microservices architectures or are you using pre-built connectors?
• How are you managing read-write access for client applications?

Closing a Day of Data Streaming with Expert Insights

During lunch, Confluent CMO Stephanie Buscemi moderated a Women in Tech panel featuring:

• Andi Fehl, Assistant Program Manager, DCO Tools with the US Army
• Monica McEwen, Managing Director with Deloitte
• Trang Tran, Deputy Chief Data Officer with US Customs and Border Protection
• Vanessa Burckard, Enterprise Architect with Social Security Administration?

These four women leaders shared their journey into the tech industry, the challenges they faced, and insights on bringing more women into the field. While each had a unique path into the data streaming field, what all the panelists had in common was that they recognized the growing importance of data and had managers, mentors, and peers who helped them grow their skills and experience to take advantage of the opportunities in front of them.

Attendees closed out the day with hands-on workshops, where Kafka experts showed them how they could use Confluent to build streaming data pipelines for the public sector.?

We hope you enjoyed this inside look at our most attended DIMT stop, but there’s so much more you can learn and discover in person – not only from Confluent but from our partners and the many data streaming experts in the crowd.

Sign up to attend DIMT 2023 in a city near you. To learn more about what’s in store, check out this recap of the Boston stop.