It’s been a year of growth, learning and community building at OSO. Our work with event-driven architecture (EDA) and Apache Kafka has been challenging but rewarding, marked by a few big milestones that have shaped our direction. Thanks for sticking with us and supporting our mission of democratising access to Kafka technology. Here’s what we accomplished in 2024.
This year we invested in growing the London community. We hosted nine meetups, welcomed 470 new members passionate about technology and innovation, and sponsored our first open-source project, EventCatalog.
2024 milestone
Number
Open-source project sponsorships
1
Meetups organised
9
New meetup members
470
Articles and blog posts
19
Podcasts
3
Webinars
4
Code repositories built
35
Each webinar aimed to demystify a technical challenge for the Kafka community, and the articles are all on the OSO blog.
What were our biggest professional achievements?
Beyond the numbers, we worked on some incredible projects. Breaking into the automotive industry by supporting work with Volvo and a Formula 1 team was a major accomplishment. Our co-hosted dinner with Redpanda in London in November 2024 was another highlight, and a sign that we’re committed to exploring (and testing!) technical boundaries.
What did we learn?
One of our biggest lessons in 2024 was the art of scaling a professional services company: balancing resource management, project scheduling and strategic foresight. Reading Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time helped us with strategic hiring and team building, and we realised we were looking for extreme self-starters as OSO expanded in 2025.
Our “building” philosophy also crystallised around a simple strategy: show up with a bias for action. Instead of getting trapped in analysis paralysis, we move forward, learn and adapt quickly, focusing on the 20% of actions that drive 80% of OSO’s growth. One of those was new educational content on our YouTube channel.
What Kafka trends were we excited to explore?
Heading into 2025 we were watching two developments:
Kafka becomes the write interface for analytics datasets. A Kafka to Apache Iceberg workflow combines transactional and operational data in one place, which can reduce reliance on costly enterprise tooling such as Databricks and Snowflake and enables real-time analytics.
AI inference chips
Chips such as those from Groq could create more seamless integrations between Apache Kafka and real-time data feeds, solving some of the trickier technical challenges in the area.
Democratising access to Apache Kafka expertise is at the heart of our mission, so we planned to launch an educational service for new Kafka enthusiasts entering the industry, breaking down the barriers that make this technology seem intimidating to new developers.
We also committed to creating content that helps developers and technical professionals solve real-world problems, with our YouTube channel becoming another key resource for guidance on common Apache Kafka challenges.
All in all, we’re proud of our community, excited about our growth and committed to continuous project and product development for the Kafka community. Need help with Kafka on your own platform? Explore OSO’s Kafka services.
Cheers, the crew at OSO.
Key takeaway: OSO’s 2024 was about community and delivery: nine London Kafka meetups, 470 new members, 19 articles, 35 code repositories, new automotive and Formula 1 work, and a 2025 focus on Kafka education and shift-left streaming analytics.
Frequently asked questions
What did OSO achieve in 2024?
In 2024 OSO organised nine Apache Kafka London meetups, welcomed 470 new meetup members, published 19 articles and blog posts, recorded three podcasts, delivered four webinars, built 35 code repositories and sponsored its first open-source project, EventCatalog.
Who runs the Apache Kafka London meetup?
OSO organises the Apache Kafka London meetup group on Meetup.com, hosting regular talks from Kafka practitioners. In 2024 the group ran nine meetups.
What Kafka trends was OSO watching for 2025?
Two trends: shift-left architecture, where Kafka is the write interface for analytics datasets through workflows such as Kafka to Apache Iceberg, and AI inference chips that could make real-time Kafka data feeds easier to integrate with AI workloads.
What open-source project did OSO sponsor in 2024?
OSO sponsored EventCatalog, an open-source tool for documenting event-driven architectures, including the events, services and domains that run on platforms such as Apache Kafka.
Where can I find OSO’s Kafka content?
OSO publishes Kafka guides on the oso.sh blog and technical videos on its YouTube channel, and hosts talks at the Apache Kafka London meetup.
