Patrick McFadin

What if someone told you that spending three days in San Jose could change your organization&rsquo;s trajectory with Apache Cassandra&reg;?
If you&rsquo;re the kind of person who&rsquo;d answer, &ldquo;sign me up,&rdquo; then you might have already <a href="https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cassandra-summit/register/">registered</a> for the rapidly approaching Cassandra Summit. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, it&rsquo;s happening March 13-14, 2023 (with an optional <a href="https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cassandra-summit/program/training/#track-1-apache-cassandrar-for-developers">training day</a> on March 12) at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in California. But getting the most out of a jam-packed event like this requires some planning, so to help you avoid getting overwhelmed, we&rsquo;ve assembled a quick guide to ensure you get the most bang for your buck from the Summit.
We&rsquo;ve broken down the must-see sessions by personas that represent typical Summit attendees (you can, of course, check out the full schedule of 60+ sessions <a href="https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cassandra-summit/program/schedule/">here</a> if you want to choose your own adventure).&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h2>For developers&nbsp;</h2>
March 12: <a href="https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cassandra-summit/program/training/#track-1-apache-cassandrar-for-developers">Apache Cassandra for Developers</a> - If you&rsquo;ve never attended a DataStax training event, the full-day developer training isn&rsquo;t something to be missed. In this pre-Summit training session, you get a lot of hands-on time in a room with experts ready to help. Not only that, the day&rsquo;s curriculum is built upon years of experience teaching this topic. You can start with zero knowledge about Cassandra and leave with a new skill set.&nbsp;
March 13: <a href="https://sched.co/1Gy7z">The What and Why of Cassandra data modeling at Scale</a> - This session offers an excellent opportunity to learn from other engineers with stories to tell. Even those with some Cassandra experience will learn something in this session.&nbsp;
March 14: <a href="https://sched.co/1Gy9O">Cassandra on ACID: This changes everything</a> - I&rsquo;ll walk you through a groundbreaking feature that&rsquo;s coming to Cassandra: <a href="https://thenewstack.io/an-apache-cassandra-breakthrough-acid-transactions-at-scale/">ACID transactions</a>. This is a part of the upcoming Cassandra 5 release and it&rsquo;s safe to say it really will change everything&mdash;especially your application.
<h2>For operators</h2>
March 12: <a href="https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cassandra-summit/program/training/#track-2-apache-cassandrar-for-operator">Apache Cassandra for Operators</a> - I&rsquo;m really excited about this upgrade to a staple Cassandra course. In previous versions, this was the class that taught you the most about manual operation of nodes and clusters. The reality is that very few of you are actually doing that anymore. With containers and Kubernetes come cloud native deployments. You&rsquo;ll get hands-on experience deploying a Cassandra cluster in this training using <a href="https://k8ssandra.io/">K8ssandra</a>.&nbsp;
March 13: <a href="https://sched.co/1Gy6p">Embracing Multi-Cloud Cassandra at Walmart</a> - Andrew Weaver and Patrick Lee&rsquo;s employer, Walmart, has been leading the way in the Cassandra community for years and is now doing the same in cloud native deployments. Andrew and Patrick have tremendous experience in Cassandra operations, making this a session you definitely don&rsquo;t want to miss.&nbsp;
March 14: <a href="https://sched.co/1Gy9p">SmartThings First 8 Years With Cassandra</a> - Jeff Beck and Colleen Velo of <a href="https://www.smartthings.com/">SmartThings</a> are sure to provide a lot of stories and wisdom that will improve your usage of Cassandra. SmartThings has been using Cassandra for those tricky IoT workloads for years. Make sure to bring your notebook&mdash;there&rsquo;ll be plenty of wisdom worth jotting down.&nbsp;
<h2>For architects</h2>
March 12: <a href="https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cassandra-summit/program/training/#track-3-apache-cassandrar-for-architects-and-data-engineers">Apache Cassandra for Architects and Data Engineers</a> - This is an entirely new training course, but one that&rsquo;s highly needed. Cloud native applications are more about how the parts are assembled than the individual pieces themselves. When building real-time applications, it's essential to understand how a combination of products can be used for an overall outcome. Gone are the days of a simple three-tiered app; today's applications are n-tiered and may require streaming or machine learning&mdash;or both!&nbsp;
March 13: <a href="https://sched.co/1Gy7S">Journey for Modernizing Traditional Banking with Online Data Platform</a> - If somebody were to say that &ldquo;banks don&rsquo;t use Cassandra,&rdquo;&nbsp; U.S. Bank&rsquo;s Suvarna Potdar and Dean Chen would like a word. U.S. Bank has been making a move from mainframes to modern, distributed systems. Even if you don&rsquo;t use a mainframe, this will be an excellent session for anyone looking to modernize their architecture and pay down technical debt.&nbsp;
March 14: <a href="https://sched.co/1Gy8x">Extracting Change Data Capture Events from Cassandra using Flink</a> - As an architect, you know that building the right solutions is a team sport, and Cassandra needs friends to bring your modern cloud architectures to life. Apache Flink is one of those friends; it scales like Cassandra and is used in places like Netflix to power some great outcomes. Netflix is no stranger to the Cassandra community, and the company&rsquo;s senior software engineer Satyajit Thadeshwar has a great integration with Flink that you might want to learn about and implement in your next application.&nbsp;
<h2>What are you waiting for?</h2>
There are <a href="https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cassandra-summit/program/schedule/">many more talks</a> if the ones above don&rsquo;t interest you&mdash;there&rsquo;s really something for everyone. More importantly, this is an in-person event, which means talking to other engineers in the community. One of the best tracks isn&rsquo;t even on the schedule: the hallway track. This is where you can ask questions directly with speakers or peers and share experiences. A great goal to shoot for when you attend the Summit is to leave with something that inspires you for the coming year. I always leave with a massive list of new ideas, and I think you will, too. Don&rsquo;t wait.&nbsp;
Your adventure awaits! If you haven&rsquo;t already, <a href="https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cassandra-summit/register/">register today</a> and plan your trip to Cassandra Summit before early registration discounts disappear. You can use DataStax&rsquo;s code CS23DS20 to get an additional 20% off your pass.

How to Get the Most Out of Cassandra Summit 2023

Patrick McFadinDeveloper Relations

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