From the heart of the expo hall at Current NOLA, this special episode drops you into the conversations, energy, and the breakthroughs as they happened.

Host, Joseph Morais, and co-host, Adi Polak talk with data streaming leaders and community voices to unpack how teams are using Apache Kafka® and Apache Flink® to power low-latency, AI-ready applications—covering patterns from usage-based billing and hybrid operations to cost efficiency and streaming governance. You’ll also hear how shift-left processing and governance make AI-ready data possible at scale. 

Plus, we break down key launches, including Queues for Kafka, Confluent Private Cloud, the Real-Time Context Engine for AI, and more.

You’ll learn:

• How modern architectures power real-time billing, entitlements, and fraud detection
• Why exactly-once processing and stateful workloads matter at scale
• How Unified Stream Manager and Confluent Private Cloud simplify hybrid, multi-cluster operations with a single pane of glass
• How Real-Time Context Engine serves governed, low-latency context to  agentic AI via MCP

The Hosts:

• Joseph Morais, Technical Champion, Confluent 
• Adi Polak, Director of Advocacy and Developer Experience Engineering, Confluent

The Guests:

• Cosmo Wolfe, CTO, Metronome 
•  Kevin Balaji, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Confluent
• Adam Bellemare, Principal Technologist, Confluent
• Sam Barker, Principal Software Engineer, IBM
• Olena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent
• Scott Haines, O’Reilly Author and OSS Educator

Guest Highlights: 
“If your company is shifting to be more nimble with monetization and especially if you're switching to more of a consumption based model, then the underlying systems have to be real time to support that.” — Cosmo Wolfe, Metronome

“So many customers out there…they are running in Amazon and in their data center and somewhere else. They're all looking for ways to monitor and manage all these different clusters in one way.” — Kevin Balaji, Confluent 

“There's a reason we call it time travel—because we're going back to a prior point in history to replay data and do something else with it.” — Scott Haines, O’Reilly Author and OSS Educator

Episode Timestamps: 
01:00 — Cosmo Wolfe, CTO, Metronome 
17:10 —  Kevin Balaji, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Confluent
28:40 — Adam Bellemare, Principal Technologist, Confluent
43:15 — Sam Barker, Principal Software Engineer, IBM
50:30 — Olena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent
01:05:00 — Scott Haines, O’Reilly Author and OSS Educator

Dive Deeper into Data Streaming:

• EP1—Stream On: Unleashing Innovation with Data Streaming | Life Is But A Stream
• EP2—Processing Without Pause: Continuous Stream Processing and Apache Flink® | Life Is But A Stream
• EP3—The Connective Tissue: Shift Left to turn Data Chaos to Clarity | Life Is But A Stream

Links & Resources:

• Connect with Joseph: https://www.youtube.com/@thedatagiant
• Joseph’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thedatagiant
• Adi’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/polak-adi/
• Keynote: Building Intelligent Systems on Real-time Data
• Watch Current On Demand: https://current.confluent.io/archive/2025/new-orleans?utm_source=simplecast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_id=tm.content_life-is-but-a-stream
• Context-Driven AI Reigned Supreme at Current New Orleans: https://www.confluent.io/blog/context-driven-ai-current-new-orleans/?utm_source=simplecast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_id=tm.content_life-is-but-a-stream
• Building Event-Driven Microservice (2E): https://www.confluent.io/resources/ebook/building-event-driven-microservices-2e/?utm_source=simplecast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_id=tm.content_life-is-but-a-stream
• Learn more at Confluent.io

Our Sponsor:  
Your data shouldn’t be a problem to manage. It should be your superpower. The Confluent data streaming platform transforms organizations with trustworthy, real-time data that seamlessly spans your entire environment and powers innovation across every use case. Create smarter, deploy faster, and maximize efficiency with a true data streaming platform from the pioneers in data streaming. Learn more at confluent.io.

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