Following the Pluralsight course Getting Started with Apache Kafka by Ryan Plant.
/path/to/kafka/bin/zookeeper-server-start /path/to/kafka/libexec/config/zookeeper.properties
telnet localhost 2181
srvr
/path/to/kafka/bin/kafka-server-start /path/to/kafka/libexec/config/server.properties
/path/to/kafka/bin/kafka-topics --create --topic my_topic --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --replication-factor 1 --partitions 1
/path/to/kafka/bin/kafka-console-producer --broker-list localhost:9092 --topic my_topic
/path/to/kafka/bin/kafka-console-consumer --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --topic my_topic --from-beginning
/path/to/kafka/bin/kafka-topics --describe --topic my_topic --zookeeper localhost:2181