About This Masterclass
Event-driven architecture has become a key pattern for building scalable, resilient, and loosely coupled systems, especially in microservices environments. However, designing and implementing such architectures effectively in real-world scenarios remains a challenge. This full-day, hands-on workshop provides a practical deep dive into designing microservices that communicate through events. Participants will learn how to architect services using asynchronous, event-based patterns to improve system modularity and flexibility. The workshop is technology-agnostic, focusing on concepts and patterns that can be applied across platforms, using message brokers such as Apache Kafka. Through presentations, exercises, and collaborative system design, attendees will explore core topics including event choreography vs orchestration, message design, delivery guarantees, idempotency, observability, and failure handling. Realistic scenarios and challenges will help solidify understanding of how to apply these patterns effectively. The workshop also addresses practical concerns such as schema evolution, monitoring message flows, using dead-letter queues, and ensuring reliability in distributed systems. Participants will walk away with a clear understanding of both the advantages and tradeoffs of event-driven communication in microservices. This workshop is aimed at software engineers and architects with prior experience in building distributed systems or microservices. No specific programming language knowledge is required; examples and labs are designed to focus on architecture and system behavior rather than language syntax. By the end of the day, participants will be equipped with a set of actionable techniques, best practices, and mental models for designing robust event-driven systems that are ready for production.