Flink Forward Virtual Conference 2020 - what to expect?
Tags: opensource, eventsinyourcity, java, apacheflink
Published: 2020-02-27 17:02:03

*UPDATE: Flink Forward San Francisco 2020 is now a virtual event! Due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, the physical event sadly had to be cancelled. However, we've spent the past couple of weeks sorting out the online event and I'm happy to share that it's now happening on April 22-24.* 

Are you interested in open source and data processing? If the answer is yes, you might want to check out the [Flink Forward](https://www.flink-forward.org/sf-2020) conference on April 22-24. It's an annual community event dedicated to stream processing and [Apache Flink](https://flink.apache.org/). This virtual event will gather over 500 software developers, engineers, data professionals, DevOps, etc. from AWS, Bird, Godaddy, Netflix, Lyft, Uber, Yelp and many more to share use cases, knowledge, and the latest updates in the stream processing space in a form of live webinars and Q&A sessions. Here's what you can look forward to:

- **Keynotes!** Don't miss the chance to hear the inspiring sessions on the future vision of stream processing as well as how **[Cloudera](https://www.flink-forward.org/sf-2020/conference-program#keynote--bulletproof-the-streaming-transformation-of-your-organization), [Splunk](https://www.flink-forward.org/sf-2020/conference-program#keynote--the-evolution-of-data-infrastructure-at-splunk)** have been integrating Flink into their products & changing their data infrastructure. 

- ["It’s finally here: Python on Flink & Flink on Zeppelin"](https://www.flink-forward.org/sf-2020/conference-program#it%E2%80%99s-finally-here--python-on-flink---flink-on-zeppelin) by Jincheng Sun & Jeff Zhang, **Alibaba**. The Flink community has been doing a lot of great work around Flink's Python support - join to hear the latest development in PyFlink and what's coming in the future. 

- ["Equality and inclusion as a way of developing diverse, resilient, and more relevant OSS"](https://www.flink-forward.org/sf-2020/conference-program#equality-and-inclusion-as-a-way-of-developing-diverse--resilient--and-more-relevant-oss-) by Griselda Cuevas, **Google** & Markos Sfikas, **Ververica**. Equality and diversity are two very important topics in the open source community right now, and Flink is no exception. In this talk, Griselda and Markos discuss how can we grow a healthy and diverse community to maximise the value & adoption of an open source project. 

- ["Flink SQL in 2020: Time to show off!"](https://www.flink-forward.org/sf-2020/conference-program#flink-sql-in-------time-to-show-off-) by Fabian Hueske & Timo Walther, **Ververica**. A few years ago, the Flink community started adding SQL support to ease and unify the processing of static and streaming data. In this talk, Fabian and Timo will demo the current streaming SQL possibilities as well as dive into the roadmap & upcoming features.

- ["Structured logging at Scale"](https://www.flink-forward.org/sf-2020/conference-program#structured-logging-at-scale) by Hrishikesh Joshi & Mayank Verma, **Lyft**. As a highly reliable and distributed system, Lyft's ride-sharing platform requires the ability to troubleshoot applications and infrastructure performance in near real-time, which can be challenging. Hrishikesh and Mayank introduce how their team is tackling these challenges with a Flink-based near real-time logging platform. 

- ["Real time identity graph"](https://www.flink-forward.org/sf-2020/conference-program#real-time-identity-graph) by Fakrudeen Ali Ahmed, **Adobe**. Hear how the identity team at Adobe uses Flink to build and update the identity graph in near real time with 50000+ events/second, 2B+ devices and serving 400 Million users. Fakrudeen will also share their journey of selecting Flink amongst other real-time data processing frameworks. 

I've only covered a few beginner-level sessions in here and I suggest visiting the [conference website](https://www.flink-forward.org/sf-2020/conference-program) for more exciting technical talks, use cases, interactive sessions for those who are interested in diving deeper. 

Join the virtual conference [here](https://www.flink-forward.org/sf-2020/).