Explore the potential of NATS as a challenger to Kafka in this 17-minute conference talk from Conf42 Kube Native 2024. Dive into the world of cloud-native messaging systems, starting with a real-world smart city scenario. Gain insights into the challenges faced by current streaming technologies and discover how NATS addresses these issues. Examine the NATS architecture, core features, and advanced capabilities like Jetstream. Learn about the security and scalability aspects of NATS, and watch a hands-on demonstration of installation, running, and implementing pub/sub and request/reply models. By the end of this talk, acquire valuable knowledge about NATS and its position in the messaging system landscape, along with resources for further exploration.