diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 8ac19a9..fa4c2f9 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -24,25 +24,30 @@
 or in standalone cluster with Zookeeper. More complex pipelines
 can be built from here and run in similar manner.  
 
-## Example Pipelines
-
+### Example Pipelines
 The following examples are included:
 
 1. [`WordCount`](https://github.com/apache/samza-beam-examples/blob/master/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/examples/WordCount.java) reads a file as input (bounded data source), and computes word frequencies. 
 
-1. [`KafkaWordCount`](https://github.com/apache/samza-beam-examples/blob/master/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/examples/KafkaWordCount.java) does the same word-count computation but reading from a Kafka stream (unbounded data source). It uses a fixed 10-sec window to aggregate the counts.
+2. [`KafkaWordCount`](https://github.com/apache/samza-beam-examples/blob/master/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/examples/KafkaWordCount.java) does the same word-count computation but reading from a Kafka stream (unbounded data source). It uses a fixed 10-sec window to aggregate the counts.
 
-## Run Examples
+### Run the Examples
 
-Each example can be run locally, in Yarn cluster or in standalone cluster. Here we use WordCount as an example.
+Each example can be run locally, in Yarn cluster or in standalone cluster. Here we use KafkaWordCount as an example.
 
-### Set Up
-
+#### Set Up
 1. Download and install [JDK version 8](https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133151.html). Verify that the JAVA_HOME environment variable is set and points to your JDK installation.
 
-1. Download and install [Apache Maven](http://maven.apache.org/download.cgi) by following Maven’s [installation guide](http://maven.apache.org/install.html) for your specific operating system.
+2. Download and install [Apache Maven](http://maven.apache.org/download.cgi) by following Maven’s [installation guide](http://maven.apache.org/install.html) for your specific operating system.
 
-1. A script named "grid" is included in this project which allows you to easily download and install Zookeeper, Kafka, and Yarn.
+Check out the `samza-beam-examples` repo:
+
+```
+$ git clone https://github.com/apache/samza-beam-examples.git
+$ cd samza-beam-examples
+```
+
+A script named "grid" is included in this project which allows you to easily download and install Zookeeper, Kafka, and Yarn.
 You can run the following to bring them all up running in your local machine:
 
 ```
@@ -57,16 +62,21 @@
 $ scripts/grid install zookeeper
 $ scripts/grid start zookeeper
 ```
+Now let's create a Kafka topic named "input-text" for this example:
+
+```
+$ ./deploy/kafka/bin/kafka-topics.sh  --zookeeper localhost:2181 --create --topic input-text --partitions 10 --replication-factor 1
+```
    
-### Local Run
+#### Run Locally
 You can run directly within the project using maven:
 
 ```
-$ mvn compile exec:java -Dexec.mainClass=org.apache.beam.examples.WordCount \
+$ mvn compile exec:java -Dexec.mainClass=org.apache.beam.examples.KafkaWordCount \
     -Dexec.args="--runner=SamzaRunner" -P samza-runner
 ```
 
-### Packaging Your Application
+#### Packaging Your Application
 To execute the example in either Yarn or standalone, you need to package it first.
 After packaging, we deploy and explode the tgz in the deploy folder:
 
@@ -75,53 +85,70 @@
  $ mvn package && tar -xvf target/samza-beam-examples-0.1-dist.tar.gz -C deploy/examples/
 ```
 
-### Standalone Cluster with Zookeeper
+#### Run in Standalone Cluster with Zookeeper
 You can use the `run-beam-standalone.sh` script included in this repo to run an example
 in standalone mode. The config file is provided as `config/standalone.properties`. Note by
-default we create one single input partition for the whole input. To set the number of 
-partitions, you can add "--maxSourceParallelism=" argument. For example, "--maxSourceParallelism=2"
-will create two partitions of the input file, based on size.  
-
-```
-$ deploy/examples/bin/run-beam-standalone.sh org.apache.beam.examples.WordCount \
-    --configFilePath=$PWD/deploy/examples/config/standalone.properties \
-    --inputFile=/Users/xiliu/opensource/samza-beam-examples/pom.xml --output=word-counts.txt \
-    --maxSourceParallelism=2
-```
-
-If the example consumes from Kafka, we can set a large "maxSourceParallelism" value so each kafka
-partition be assigned to a Samza task (the total number of tasks will be bounded by 
-maxSourceParallelism). E.g.
+default we create one single split for the whole input (--maxSourceParallelism=1). To 
+set each Kafka partition in a split, we can set a large "maxSourceParallelism" value which 
+is the upper bound of the number of splits.
 
 ```
 $ deploy/examples/bin/run-beam-standalone.sh org.apache.beam.examples.KafkaWordCount \
-    --configFilePath=$PWD/deploy/examples/config/standalone.properties \
-    --maxSourceParallelism=1024
+    --configFilePath=$PWD/deploy/examples/config/standalone.properties --maxSourceParallelism=1024
 ```
 
-###  Yarn Cluster
+#### Run Yarn Cluster
 Similar to running standalone, we can use the `run-beam-yarn.sh` to run the examples
 in Yarn cluster. The config file is provided as `config/yarn.properties`. To run the 
-WordCount example in yarn:
+KafkaWordCount example in yarn:
 
 ```
- $ deploy/examples/bin/run-beam-yarn.sh org.apache.beam.examples.WordCount \
-    --configFilePath=$PWD/deploy/examples/config/yarn.properties \
-    --inputFile=/Users/xiliu/opensource/samza-beam-examples/pom.xml \
-    --output=/tmp/word-counts.txt --maxSourceParallelism=2
+$ deploy/examples/bin/run-beam-yarn.sh org.apache.beam.examples.KafkaWordCount \
+    --configFilePath=$PWD/deploy/examples/config/yarn.properties --maxSourceParallelism=1024
 ```
 
-Same as Standalone, we can provide a large "maxSourceParallelism" value to have better parallism
-in Kafka case.
+#### Validate the Pipeline Results
+Now the pipeline is deployed to either locally, standalone or Yarn. Let's check out the results. First we start a kakfa consumer to listen to the output:
 
-## Beyond Examples
+```
+$ ./deploy/kafka/bin/kafka-console-consumer.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --topic word-count --property print.key=true
+```
+
+Then let's publish a few lines to the input Kafka topic:
+
+```
+$ ./deploy/kafka/bin/kafka-console-producer.sh --topic input-text --broker-list localhost:9092
+Nory was a Catholic because her mother was a Catholic, and Nory’s mother was a Catholic because her father was a Catholic, and her father was a Catholic because his mother was a Catholic, or had been.
+```
+
+You should see the word count shows up in the consumer console in about 10 secs:
+
+```
+a       6
+br      1
+mother  3
+was     6
+Catholic        6
+his     1
+Nory    2
+s       1
+father  2
+had     1
+been    1
+and     2
+her     3
+or      1
+because 3
+```
+
+### Beyond Examples
 Feel free to build more complex pipelines based on the examples above, and reach out to us:
 
 * Subscribe and mail to [user@beam.apache.org](mailto:user@beam.apache.org) for any Beam questions.
 
 * Subscribe and mail to [user@samza.apache.org](mailto:user@samza.apache.org) for any Samza questions.
 
-## More Information
+### More Information
 
 * [Apache Beam](http://beam.apache.org)
 * [Apache Samza](https://samza.apache.org/)
diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index d78812a..2689de3 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@
   <packaging>jar</packaging>
 
   <properties>
-    <beam.version>2.9.0</beam.version>
+    <beam.version>2.11.0</beam.version>
     <samza.version>0.14.1</samza.version>
 
     <guava.version>20.0</guava.version>
@@ -192,6 +192,24 @@
       <version>${samza.version}</version>
     </dependency>
 
+    <dependency>
+      <groupId>org.apache.samza</groupId>
+      <artifactId>samza-api</artifactId>
+      <version>${samza.version}</version>
+    </dependency>
+
+    <dependency>
+      <groupId>org.apache.samza</groupId>
+      <artifactId>samza-kafka_2.11</artifactId>
+      <version>${samza.version}</version>
+    </dependency>
+
+    <dependency>
+      <groupId>org.apache.samza</groupId>
+      <artifactId>samza-core_2.11</artifactId>
+      <version>${samza.version}</version>
+    </dependency>
+
     <!-- Dependencies below this line are specific dependencies needed by the examples code. -->
     <dependency>
       <groupId>joda-time</groupId>
diff --git a/scripts/grid b/scripts/grid
index bf2266a..fb91827 100755
--- a/scripts/grid
+++ b/scripts/grid
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@
 COMMAND=$1
 SYSTEM=$2
 
-DOWNLOAD_KAFKA=https://archive.apache.org/dist/kafka/0.10.1.1/kafka_2.11-0.10.1.1.tgz
+DOWNLOAD_KAFKA=https://archive.apache.org/dist/kafka/0.10.2.1/kafka_2.11-0.10.2.1.tgz
 DOWNLOAD_YARN=https://archive.apache.org/dist/hadoop/common/hadoop-2.6.1/hadoop-2.6.1.tar.gz
 DOWNLOAD_ZOOKEEPER=http://archive.apache.org/dist/zookeeper/zookeeper-3.4.3/zookeeper-3.4.3.tar.gz
 
@@ -93,7 +93,7 @@
 
 install_kafka() {
   mkdir -p "$DEPLOY_ROOT_DIR"
-  install kafka $DOWNLOAD_KAFKA kafka_2.11-0.10.1.1
+  install kafka $DOWNLOAD_KAFKA kafka_2.11-0.10.2.1
   # have to use SIGTERM since nohup on appears to ignore SIGINT
   # and Kafka switched to SIGINT in KAFKA-1031.
   sed -i.bak 's/SIGINT/SIGTERM/g' $DEPLOY_ROOT_DIR/kafka/bin/kafka-server-stop.sh
diff --git a/src/main/bash/run-beam-container.sh b/src/main/bash/run-beam-container.sh
index c58a1f1..4e9f8d9 100755
--- a/src/main/bash/run-beam-container.sh
+++ b/src/main/bash/run-beam-container.sh
@@ -31,4 +31,6 @@
 base_dir=`pwd`
 cd $home_dir
 
-exec $(dirname $0)/run-class.sh $1 --runner=org.apache.beam.runners.samza.SamzaRunner --configFactory=org.apache.beam.runners.samza.container.ContainerCfgFactory "${@:2}"
\ No newline at end of file
+override="{\"task.execute\":\"bin/run-beam-container.sh $@\"}"
+
+exec $(dirname $0)/run-class.sh $1 --runner=org.apache.beam.runners.samza.SamzaRunner --configFactory=org.apache.beam.runners.samza.container.ContainerCfgFactory --configOverride="$override" "${@:2}"
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/src/main/bash/run-beam-standalone.sh b/src/main/bash/run-beam-standalone.sh
index f523f5a..88bd43c 100755
--- a/src/main/bash/run-beam-standalone.sh
+++ b/src/main/bash/run-beam-standalone.sh
@@ -18,4 +18,6 @@
 
 [[ $JAVA_OPTS != *-Dlog4j.configuration* ]] && export JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dlog4j.configuration=file:$(dirname $0)/log4j-console.xml"
 
-exec $(dirname $0)/run-class.sh $1 --runner=org.apache.beam.runners.samza.SamzaRunner "${@:2}"
\ No newline at end of file
+override="{\"task.execute\":\"bin/run-beam-container.sh $@\"}"
+
+exec $(dirname $0)/run-class.sh $1 --runner=org.apache.beam.runners.samza.SamzaRunner --configOverride="$override" "${@:2}"
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/src/main/bash/run-beam-yarn.sh b/src/main/bash/run-beam-yarn.sh
index 6d65075..0e1df52 100755
--- a/src/main/bash/run-beam-yarn.sh
+++ b/src/main/bash/run-beam-yarn.sh
@@ -29,11 +29,11 @@
 
 op=$(if [[ "$@" =~ (--operation=)([^ ]*) ]]; then echo "${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"; else echo "run"; fi)
 
-cmd="{\"task.execute\":\"bin/run-beam-container.sh $@\"}"
+override="{\"task.execute\":\"bin/run-beam-container.sh $@\"}"
 
 case $op in
   run)
-    exec $(dirname $0)/run-class.sh $1 --runner=org.apache.beam.runners.samza.SamzaRunner --configOverride="$cmd" "${@:2}"
+    exec $(dirname $0)/run-class.sh $1 --runner=org.apache.beam.runners.samza.SamzaRunner --configOverride="$override" "${@:2}"
   ;;
 
   kill)