Open Source 101 2023 - Observability For You and Me with OpenTelemetry (slides)

 As mentioned previously, I submitted the Open Source 101 series conference being hosted in Charlotte, NC on 23 March 2023.

Interestingly enough, they picked up a talk on observability and the open source community project known as OpenTelemetry.

I was to give this talk with a co-speaker Paige Cruz, but she's going to be on the West Coast speaking at three other events during this same time period, so I'm flying solo.

As promised in my talk, the slides are provided below along with the session abstract.

This talk will be on the basics of getting started with cloud native observability and specifically the open source project found in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), OpenTelemetry. Here are the slides:

For completeness, the session abstract is provided below.

Observability For You and Me with openTelemetry

Are you interested in dipping your toes in the cloud native observability waters, but as an engineer you are not sure where to get started with tracing problems through your microservices and application landscapes on Kubernetes? Then this is the session for you, where we take you on your first steps in an active open-source project that offers a buffet of languages, challenges, and opportunities for getting started with telemetry data.

The project is called openTelemetry, but before diving into the specifics, we’ll start with de-mystifying key concepts and terms such as observability, telemetry, instrumentation, cardinality, percentile to lay a foundation. After understanding the nuts and bolts of observability and distributed traces, we’ll explore the openTelemetry community; its Special Interest Groups (SIGs), repositories, and how to become not only an end-user, but possibly a contributor.We will wrap up with an overview of the components in this project, such as the Collector, the OpenTelemetry protocol (OTLP), its APIs, and its SDKs.

Attendees will leave with an understanding of key observability concepts, become grounded in distributed tracing terminology, be aware of the components of openTelemetry, and know how to take their first steps to an open-source contribution! 

Room: Technology 1

Time: 10:30 - 11:15 ET

I really enjoyed introducing you to topics like observability, tracing, telemetry, and of course a very cool open source project. Thanks for coming to my session in North Carolina and hope you enjoyed the SWAG that was handed out!