The Apache Kafka community was busy last month with the release of a technical preview for Kafka Streams and a vote on a release plan for Kafka 0.10.0. The discussion around key proposals accelerated to meet the deadline, two release candidates were rolled out, but ultimately, the release was put on hold to incorporate additional changes. This pause allowed for further refinement and improvement of the upcoming release, which is expected to include several new features and updates. Some notable changes include rack-awareness in Kafka, improvements to the Connect REST API, and support for standard SASL mechanisms. The community is also actively discussing various KIPs, including proposals for administrative actions, protocol improvements, and time-based indexes. These developments aim to enhance the overall performance and functionality of Apache Kafka.