Confluent Developer ft. Tim Berglund, Adi Polak & Viktor Gamov

Confluent
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Nov 3, 2025 • 27min

Scaling AI in Engineering with Peter Bell | Ep. 7

Listen: https://confluent.buzzsprout.com | Today, Adi Polak talks to her guest, Peter Bell (gather.dev), about his career in software engineering leadership, CTO community building, and AI-driven development. Peter’s first job: electronics lab technician at their school (alongside shifts at Tesco). His challenge/theme: working at scale with AI adoption and change management.Check out gather.dev: https://www.gather.dev/SEASON 2 Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed Music by Coastal Kites Artwork by Phil Vo 🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes. 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.
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Oct 27, 2025 • 25min

How Kafka Expert Robin Moffat Tackles Open Source Problems | Ep. 6

Viktor Gamov chats with Robin Moffat, a seasoned data engineer and Confluent DevRel expert in Apache Kafka. They explore Robin's journey from paperboy to tech influencer, highlighting his early days in computing and community contributions. Robin discusses critical Kafka topics including listener behaviors, configuring advertised listeners, and challenges with Oracle materialized views. He also shares insights on tackling complex engineering problems with a methodical approach and the nuances of Kafka Connect converters. A must-listen for tech enthusiasts!
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Oct 20, 2025 • 26min

Building Parquet into Apache Pinot ft. Neha Pawar | Ep. 5

Today, Tim Berglund talks to Neha Pawar (StarTree) about her career in real-time analytics and open source database engineering. Her first job: a year-long internship at NVIDIA. Her challenge: leading the technical effort to add native Parquet support into Apache Pinot.SEASON 2 Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed Music by Coastal Kites Artwork by Phil Vo 🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes. 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.
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Oct 13, 2025 • 30min

The Fix That Secured 1000s of Credit Cards ft. Brian Sletten | Ep. 4

In this episode, Tim talks to Brian Sletten (Bosatsu Consulting) about his career in software development. His first job: working at a small communications company that built network matrix switch interfaces. His challenge/theme: overhauling credit card storage and security at a major hospitality company.SEASON 2 Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed Music by Coastal Kites Artwork by Phil Vo 🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes. 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.
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Oct 6, 2025 • 30min

How Viktor Gamov Stays Curious as Tech Rapidly Evolves | Ep. 3

Viktor Gamov, a Developer Advocate and streaming-systems expert, shares his fascinating journey from apple picking to tech innovation. He discusses key challenges, like designing in-memory data grid solutions with Hazelcast and implementing ultra-low-latency systems for financial trading. Viktor emphasizes the importance of curiosity and a non-judgmental approach in a rapidly changing landscape. He also highlights the significance of event-driven architectures and shares valuable career insights centered around mastery, purpose, and autonomy.
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Sep 29, 2025 • 31min

How Tim Berglund Found His Calling | Ep. 2

Tim Berglund, a prominent figure in streaming data and developer relations, shares his fascinating journey from a Burger King broiler steamer to the tech world. He recounts his early passion for coding, discusses a challenging firmware project, and his transition to web development. Tim sheds light on building unique data tools for passive components and his growth in engineering management. He reflects on the evolution of technology, the rise of open source, and the importance of embracing one's career journey amid feelings of imposter syndrome.
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Sep 22, 2025 • 33min

Building Real-time Systems for Apple, Nike & more ft. Adi Polak | Ep. 1

Adi Polak, a developer relations leader at Confluent, shares her fascinating journey from dog walker to building large-scale analytics at Akamai. She discusses the challenges of optimizing real-time threat detection and how collaboration shaped her career. Learn about the key innovations in analytics for identifying DDoS attacks and the importance of empathy and trust in engineering success. Adi emphasizes the significance of long-term investments in developing robust analytics platforms.
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Sep 2, 2025 • 1min

We're back! Welcome to the Confluent Developer Podcast.

Weekly episodes launching Sept. 22! | Hi, I'm Tim Berglund. It's been about four years since I've been podcasting at Confluent, and "Streaming Audio" has been on hiatus for a little more than two, but I've got great news: we are back! We're back with a new name, a new format, and new hosts. Welcome to the Confluent Developer Podcast, where we talk to software developers of all stripes about some of the most interesting problems they've solved in their career. I'll be joined by my co-hosts, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov. And hey, you know, we're all basically Kafka people, so of course, we're going to gravitate towards experts in data streaming and the technologies relevant in that space. But you know what? We're not limited to that. Really, we want to talk to developers of all kinds about the toughest problems they've solved and how that process changed them and changed the environment around them. So join us. We're launching September 22 with weekly episodes on the Confluent Developer YouTube channel or wherever it is you get your podcasts. We'll see you soon.SEASON 2 Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed Music by Coastal Kites Artwork by Phil Vo 🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes. 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.
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Jun 15, 2023 • 11min

Apache Kafka 3.5 - Kafka Core, Connect, Streams, & Client Updates

Apache Kafka® 3.5 is here with the capability of previewing migrations between ZooKeeper clusters to KRaft mode. Follow along as Danica Fine highlights key release updates.Kafka Core:KIP-833 provides an updated timeline for KRaft.KIP-866 now is preview and allows migration from an existing ZooKeeper cluster to KRaft mode.KIP-900 introduces a way to bootstrap the KRaft controllers with SCRAM credentials.KIP-903 prevents a data loss scenario by preventing replicas with stale broker epochs from joining the ISR list. KIP-915 streamlines the process of downgrading Kafka's transaction and group coordinators by introducing tagged fields.Kafka Connect:KIP-710 provides the option to use a REST API for internal server communication that can be enabled by setting `dedicated.mode.enable.internal.rest` equal to true. KIP-875 offers support for native offset management in Kafka Connect. Connect cluster administrators can now read offsets for both source and sink connectors. This KIP adds a new STOPPED state for connectors, enabling users to shut down connectors and maintain connector configurations without utilizing resources.KIP-894 makes `IncrementalAlterConfigs` API available for use in MirrorMaker 2 (MM2), adding a new use.incremental.alter.config configuration which takes values “requested,” “never,” and “required.”KIP-911 adds a new source tag for metrics generated by the `MirrorSourceConnector` to help monitor mirroring deployments.Kafka Streams:KIP-339 improves Kafka Streams' error-handling capabilities by addressing serialization errors that occur before message production and extending the interface for custom error handling. KIP-889 introduces versioned state stores in Kafka Streams for temporal join semantics in stream-to-table joins. KIP-904 simplifies table aggregation in Kafka by proposing a change in serialization format to enable one-step aggregation and reduce noise from events with old and new keys/values. KIP-914 modifies how versioned state stores are used in Kafka Streams. Versioned state stores may impact different DSL processors in varying ways, see the documentation for details.Kafka Client:KIP-881 is now complete and introduces new client-side assignor logic for rack-aware consumer balancing for Kafka Consumers. KIP-887 adds the `EnvVarConfigProvider` implementation to Kafka so custom configurations stored in environment variables can be injected into the system by providing the map returned by `System.getEnv()`.KIP 641 introduces the `RecordReader` interface to Kafka's clients module, replacing the deprecated MessageReader Scala trait. EPISODE LINKSSee release notes for Apache Kafka 3.5Read the blog to learn moreDownload and get startedSEASON 2 Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed Music by Coastal Kites Artwork by Phil Vo 🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes. 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.
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Apr 13, 2023 • 1min

A Special Announcement from Streaming Audio

After recording 64 episodes and featuring 58 amazing guests, the Streaming Audio podcast series has amassed over 130,000 plays on YouTube in the last year. We're extremely proud of these achievements and feel that it's time to take a well-deserved break. Streaming Audio will be taking a vacation! We want to express our gratitude to you, our valued listeners, for spending 10,000 hours with us on this incredible journey.Rest assured, we will be back with more episodes! In the meantime, feel free to revisit some of our previous episodes. For instance, you can listen to Anna McDonald share her stories about the worst Apache Kafka® bugs she’s ever seen, or listen to Jun Rao offer his expert advice on running Kafka in production. And who could forget the charming backstory behind Mitch Seymour's Kafka storybook, Gently Down the Stream?These memorable episodes brought us joy, and we're thrilled to have shared them with you. As we reflect on our accomplishments with pride, we also look forward to an exciting future. Until we meet again, happy listening!EPISODE LINKSTop 6 Worst Apache Kafka JIRA BugsRunning Apache Kafka in ProductionLearn How Stream-Processing Works The Simplest Way PossibleWatch the video version of this podcastStreaming Audio Playlist Join the Confluent CommunityLearn more with Kafka tutorials, resources, and guides at Confluent DeveloperLive demo: Intro to Event-Driven Microservices with ConfluentUse PODCAST100 to get an additional $100 of free Confluent Cloud usage (details)  SEASON 2 Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed Music by Coastal Kites Artwork by Phil Vo 🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes. 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.

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