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Apache Kafka Meetup - Melbourne - August 2026

August 20, 2026 5:30pm – 7:30pm AEST Melbourne, AU (In person)

Join us for an Apache Kafka x Apache Flink meetup in Melbourne on August 20th from 5:30pm, hosted at Factor House.

Karel Sague of Factor House shares real-world lessons from migrating a production data platform from Snowflake to Apache Iceberg, including streaming Kafka data into Iceberg with Kafka Connect, GitOps-based self-serve provisioning, and how to prioritize which workloads to migrate first.

Dominique Ronde of Confluent then explores how Kafka and Flink integrate with GenAI to build systems capable of real-time learning, automation, and decision-making.

The evening includes pizza, drinks, and networking. Registration takes place on Meetup.

Agenda

  • 5:30 pm Doors open, pizza, drinks, and networking
  • 6:00 pm Karel Sague, Staff Software Engineer, Factor House
  • 6:30 pm Dominique Ronde, Staff Solution Engineer, Confluent
  • 7:00 pm Additional networking

Speakers

Karel Sague

Staff Software Engineer, Factor House

Karel Sague is a Staff Software Engineer at Factor House, where he works on real-time data streaming infrastructure spanning Kafka, Flink, and Iceberg. Before joining Factor House, he spent 8 years as a Software Engineer at Square (Block Inc.), and prior to that worked as a consultant at ThoughtWorks. Across his career he has built and operated large-scale data platforms in financial services and consulting, with deep experience in event-driven architecture, streaming ingestion, and open table formats.

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Talk: "Journey to an open lakehouse: real-world lessons from streaming Kafka into Apache Iceberg"

Dominique Ronde

Staff Solution Engineer, Confluent

Dominique Ronde is a Staff Solution Engineer at Confluent. With previous roles as a Big Data Architect and Data Scientist at freeyou, SAP, and Allianz, Dominique brings deep expertise in digital transformation, Java, AWS, and Apache Kafka. Since 2016, he has worked extensively with Apache Flink and currently serves as a subject matter expert in the APAC region.

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Talk: "Guardians of the Stream: Kafka, Flink, and the Rise of GenAI"

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