Amsterdam JUG Meetup at Confluent/IBM
About the event
Join in with the latest Amsterdam JUG Meetup at [IBM, Johan Huizingalaan 765, 1066 VH Amsterdam](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QWbHt2bBKTGuCtbA7). Note: All participants can park their car for free at the IBM parking in front of the office. There are two electric charging stations too for those that drive an electric car. Agenda 18:00 - Doors Open 18:00 - 18:30 - Food/Drinks and networking 18:30 - 19:15 - The Missing Protocol: How MCP Bridges LLMs and Data Streams —[Viktor Gamov](https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikgamov/) 19:15 - 20:00 - Bootiful Spring AI—[Josh Long](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlong/) and [James Ward](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesward/) 20:00 - 21:00 - Networking drinks Abstracts The Missing Protocol: How MCP Bridges LLMs and Data Streams —[Viktor Gamov](https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikgamov/) Nobody’s talking about this: MCP isn’t just another way to build chatbots. It’s the bridge we’ve been missing between AI reasoning and real-time data systems. Teams build AI applications that work great in demos but fall apart with production data. Your agents analyze historical reports but can’t tell what’s happening in your Kafka streams. They’re blind to schema changes and disconnected from events that matter to your business. Instead of treating streaming platforms like black boxes, you expose them directly to your agents via MCP protocol. Suddenly, your AI doesn’t just read about data—it lives inside your data flows. Learn what becomes possible when you stop thinking about AI as an external service and start treating it as part of your streaming architecture. We’ll build systems where agents subscribe to real-time events, reason about evolving schemas, and make decisions that ripple through your data platform. Bootiful Spring AI—[Josh Long](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlong/) and [James Ward](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesward/) The age of artificial intelligence (because the search for regular intelligence hasn't gone well..) is nearly at hand, and it's everywhere! But is it in your application? It should be. AI is about integration, and here the Java and Spring communities come second to nobody. In this talk, we'll demystify the concepts of modern day Artificial Intelligence and look at its integration with the white hot new Spring AI project, a framework that builds on the richness of Spring Boot to extend them to the wide world of AI engineering. Bios [Viktor Gamov](https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikgamov/) is a Principal Developer Advocate at Confluent, founded by the original creators of Apache Kafka®. With a rich background in implementing and advocating for distributed systems and cloud-native architectures, Viktor excels in open-source technologies. He is passionate about helping architects, developers, and operators craft systems that are not only low-latency and scalable but also highly available.As a Java Champion and esteemed speaker, Viktor is known for his insightful presentations at top industry events such as JavaOne, Devoxx, Kafka Summit, and QCon. His expertise spans distributed systems, real-time data streaming, JVM, and DevOps. Viktor has co-authored “Enterprise Web Development” and “Apache Kafka® in Action”. Follow Viktor on X - @gamussa to stay updated with Viktor’s latest thoughts on technology, his gym and food adventures, and insights into open-source and developer advocacy. [Josh Long](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlong/) (@starbuxman) has been the first Spring Developer Advocate since 2010. Josh is a Java Champion, author of 7 books (including "Reactive Spring") and numerous best-selling video training (including "Building Microservices with Spring Boot Livelessons" with Spring Boot co-founder Phil Webb), and an open-source contributor (Spring Boot, Spring Integration, Axon, Spring Cloud, Activiti, Vaadin, etc), a Youtuber (Coffee + Software with Josh Long as well as my Spring Tips series ), and a podcaster ("A Bootiful Podcast"). [James…
