By Nagashree, Lead Software Engineer, Data Streaming Platform
Crossing my nation’s boundaries for the first time to a faraway land, with the zeal to represent my “family of choice” (Fidelity), was both a restless responsibility and a priceless pride! I fulfilled one of my dreams when I was asked to represent Fidelity at the Kafka Summit London in May this year, and travel outside of India for the very first time. It was an amazing journey for me and my teammates. Kafka Summit London is a huge conference uniting data streaming engineers, architects and developers on the exhaustive work done in the field of streaming. My colleagues and I journeyed there not only to absorb the rich knowledge and learning opportunities that the conference has to offer, but we were actually there to present as well!
The summit kicked off with an insightful keynote by Jay Kreps, CEO and co-founder of Confluent, followed by a day-long expo hall. The expo hall took us back to our college tech fest days in India; a buzzing space filled with emerging ideas from product teams. Each booth within the expo hall provided a stream of information and set the stage for mutual knowledge sharing. I learned so much from the multiple organizations who came from all over the world to present their work. One of my favorite parts of the day was recognizing that Fidelity is truly leading the way in event streaming technology for financial service companies in terms of meeting customer needs with creative solutions. This was such a rewarding feeling to see firsthand at the conference!
I learned so much from this event! The topics in the breakout sessions provided me with a deeper knowledge and broader understanding of event streaming concepts. The lightening talk presenters awed us with unique ideas. Then the time came when it was eventually my turn to present!
Even though we had several dry runs before the conference to practice our presentation, we were still nervous. It was more so a combination of nerves and excitement as we were presenting for the first time on a global platform, addressing a huge external audience on an internal tool that my team and I worked closely on. I am thankful to our communications team who were extremely supportive in setting up meetings with us beforehand to practice. Knowing that we are well prepared made us more confident to present on our work!
After our presentation was done, it was time for some fun! I can’t speak more highly of the “Game Day” session, which brought multiple associates from various companies together as a team and did some mind-boggling stream connections live. “Game Day” is a team learning exercise that tests skills in implementing AWS solutions to solve real-world problems in a gamified, risk-free environment. It’s fun when work becomes play time! This was an ideal opportunity to discuss ideas and identify opportunities for improvement in each other’s projects. It was so exciting to have the opportunity to collaborate to create something bigger and better with the potential to significantly impact the future of event streaming.
I can’t thank Fidelity enough for encouraging us and supporting us to embrace this new culture of work. Global conferences are the new trend setters where knowledge becomes wisdom. We must all encourage each other to gain new perspectives and broaden our horizons.
Apply to our open Technology roles at Fidelity here!
