Kafkathon 2020: Hacking Event Streams Everywhere

Kafkathon 2020, held during the Kafka Summit, was a community hackathon organized by the Confluent Community team, aimed at fostering learning and innovation around Apache Kafka. The event challenged participants to develop Kafka-related projects within 48 hours, with teams comprising up to five members. The first-place project, Kafka Socket, created by Alexandr Marchenko, provided a secure and user-friendly way to access Kafka clusters using a Node.js application with a client library. The second-place project, From Home and Beyond, developed by Edgar Madrigal and his team, utilized Voluble to generate fake data for exploring Kafka topics, despite facing challenges with Windows 10 compatibility. The hackathon encouraged creativity and collaboration, offering participants Confluent Certification Program vouchers and on-demand courses. The event exemplified Confluent's mission to engage and educate the Kafka community, with plans for future hackathons and community sponsorships.