Some of the proposed example require Apache Kafka running on localhost:9092

If you download Kafka, you can use the scripts in the 'Kafka' folder, to start ZooKeeper, Kafka, and create the "flank-events" topic. 

Alternatively, you can try to set up a docker-compose for creating a small network with ZooKeeper and Kafka, exposing ports 2181 and 9092, respectively.

For example, see: https://developer.confluent.io/quickstart/kafka-docker/