Workshop based on the blog post “Metrics, logs, traces, and mayhem: introducing an observability adventure game powered by Grafana Alloy and OTel“, at Cloud Native Day Bergen 2025: https://2025.cloudnativebergen.dev/speaker/imma-valls

Workshop Instructions at https://github.com/grafana/adventure/blob/main/workshop.md

This hands-on workshop transforms learning about observability into an engaging adventure!

Step into a text-based game where you’ll master essential observability tools—metrics, logs, and traces—and discover how to leverage them effectively for real-world troubleshooting and gaining critical insights into your applications.

Powered by OpenTelemetry (OTel) and the Grafana stack, this session offers a unique, interactive environment for exploring the critical components of a robust observability strategy. You’ll gain practical experience identifying, understanding, and resolving complex system issues.

Whether you’re a developer, operator, or just curious about understanding your system’s health, you’ll leave with a solid foundation on how OpenTelemetry and core observability tools can empower you to solve complex problems confidently.

You’re also welcome to work in pairs and collaborate on your observability adventure!

Pre-requisites: Docker and Git are installed on your machine, or access to a web browser to run the workshop on a Killercoda playground

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/imma-valls_meet-imma-valls-bernaus-staff-developer-activity-7373264388067258369-drEj

Recording: https://grafana.com/go/webinar/k6-performance-testing-and-observability-in-grafana-cloud-emea/

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, ensuring a smooth and reliable end-user experience is critical. Join us to explore how Grafana’s suite of observability tools—Grafana Cloud k6, Frontend Observability, and Synthetic Monitoring—helps engineering teams test, monitor, and optimize user journeys across the software lifecycle.

Best of all, you’ll learn how to reuse the same k6 test scripts across performance testing and synthetic monitoring, streamlining workflows across development, QA, and production.

Whether you’re focused on frontend development, QA, or production reliability, this webinar will show how Grafana provides full visibility into your most critical user experiences.

What you’ll learn

1. Gain real-time insights into user interactions with Grafana Cloud Frontend Observability.
2. Proactively performance test key user flows with Grafana Cloud k6.
3. Continuously validate those same flows in production with Grafana Cloud Synthetic Monitoring.

RSVP: https://grafana.com/go/webinar/k6-performance-testing-and-observability-in-grafana-cloud-emea/

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/almudenavivanco_performance-testing-and-observability-in-activity-7387037762975100928-MuGz

This talk was presented at KCD Edinburgh 2025: https://sessionize.com/view/yz0a7tia/GridSmart?format=Embed_Styled_Html&isDark=false&title=KCD%20UK%20Edinburgh%202025

Thinking about contributing to a CNCF project? Does it seem daunting, or perhaps you feel it’s too late to start at this stage in your career? You might be surprised to learn that it’s more accessible than you think!

In this session, I’ll share my journey as a first-time contributor to OpenTelemetry, providing a roadmap from initial interest to a successful contribution. You’ll gain practical tips on finding the right project and those good first-time issues. We’ll explore the crucial role of mentorship, especially for individuals from underrepresented groups, and how the supportive OpenTelemetry community can guide you through the process.

I aim to inspire you – whether you’re from an underrepresented background or believe your chance to contribute has passed – to take the plunge and discover the rewarding world of open source. You’ll leave with actionable insights and the confidence to begin your own contribution journey.

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/imma-valls_kcdedinburgh-opentelemetry-cncf-activity-7380851897492144128-nRFL
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulalkennedy_kubernetes-cloudnative-kcduk-activity-7386636082529968129-wpAk

This talk was presented at OpenFest Bulgaria 2025: https://cfp.openfest.org/openfest-2025/talk/WAKHZG/

Thinking about contributing to an open source project? Does it seem daunting, or maybe you feel it’s too late to start? You might be surprised to learn how accessible it is—and how quickly you can make an impact.

In this session, I’ll share my journey as a first-time contributor to OpenTelemetry, detailing how I went from no contributions to becoming a project member in just one month. I’ll provide a clear roadmap from initial interest to a successful contribution, giving you actionable tips on finding the right project and tackling those “good first-time issues.” We’ll explore the crucial role of mentorship and sponsorship, especially for individuals from underrepresented groups, and how the supportive OpenTelemetry community can guide you through the process. And other communities will too.

I aim to inspire you—whether you’re from an underrepresented background or believe your chance to contribute has passed—to take the plunge and discover the rewarding world of open source. You’ll leave with actionable insights and the confidence to begin your contribution journey.

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/openfest-bulgaria_the-50-first-timer-its-never-too-late-activity-7381327479715725312-hd38
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/imma-valls_openfest-sofia-grafana-activity-7381248181063290880-sr30
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vasil-kaftandzhiev-28463b56_openfest-grafanalabs-opensource-activity-7385212568488894465-dGfq
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shyukri_i%CC%87nspiring-talk-from-imma-valls-bernauson-activity-7385651872369491968-TFYL
• ttps://www.linkedin.com/posts/imma-valls_openfest-grafana-opensource-activity-7386719844689395712-qWhP

Workshop based on the blog post “Metrics, logs, traces, and mayhem: introducing an observability adventure game powered by Grafana Alloy and OTel“, at OpenFest Sofia 2025: https://cfp.openfest.org/openfest-2025/talk/MN3STV/

This hands-on workshop transforms learning about observability into an engaging adventure!

Step into a text-based game where you’ll master essential observability tools—metrics, logs, and traces—and discover how to leverage them effectively for real-world troubleshooting and gaining critical insights into your applications.

Powered by OpenTelemetry (OTel) and the Grafana stack, this session offers a unique, interactive environment for exploring the critical components of a robust observability strategy. You’ll gain practical experience identifying, understanding, and resolving complex system issues.

Whether you’re a developer, operator, or just curious about understanding your system’s health, you’ll leave with a solid foundation on how OpenTelemetry and core observability tools can empower you to solve complex problems confidently.

You’re also welcome to work in pairs and collaborate on your observability adventure!

Pre-requisites: Docker and Git are installed on your machine, or access to a web browser to run the workshop on a Killercoda playground

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/imma-valls_openfest-sofia-grafana-activity-7381248181063290880-sr30
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/imma-valls_openfest-grafana-opensource-activity-7386719844689395712-qWhP

A while back, I was reflecting on my 2024 community meetup journey. If 2024 was about recovering from a challenging year with the support of our communities, then 2025 has been fundamentally about connection. This past year has cemented my belief that the most impactful communities are those that break down silos, share resources, and actively collaborate. And this post is a reflection on why I chose to connect the dots between different groups, technologies, and cities, and what I learned along the way.

The core thesis here is simple: we are stronger together. My focus for 2025 is on joint ventures, bringing together the best of Cloud Native Barcelona, Grafana & Friends, Software Crafters, DevOps BCN, Kafka, and other communities, to offer the community something richer and more valuable than we could offer alone.

Before diving into the details, I would like to extend a massive, heartfelt thank you to every single person who made this year’s community work happen. Thank you to my brilliant co-organizers for their countless times jumping in to help; to the sponsoring hosts who opened their doors and provided logistical support; to every dedicated speaker for sharing their expertise; and to every single attendee who showed up and brought the energy. You are the community, and your efforts make it worthwhile.

I also want to commit to an honest assessment here. This journey had incredible highs, but also presented persistent challenges, particularly in terms of diversity and inclusion. Community building is a rewarding yet ongoing process, and I hope to share lessons from both the highs and the challenges.

From Seeds to a Network: The Collaborative Formula for Community Growth

Every journey begins with a starting point, a seed. For me, the initial ground for cultivating community stemmed from two foundational experiences. I first learned the ropes of bringing people together around shared technical interests with the Elastic User Groups in Barcelona and Madrid back in 2018, alongside Janko Strassburg, my long-time partner in crime. What followed was the restarting of Software Crafters Barcelona meetups in 2022, with Manuel Rivero‘s invaluable support and advice. The Crafters community, with its dedication to hands-on learning with regular coding dojos, truly instilled in me the value of consistency and showing up for the community.

These experiences laid the groundwork, and 2024 truly marked the beginning of a new chapter: joint meetups. Driven by a desire to break down the invisible walls between communities, this shift felt very organic.

The first joint venture was between Software Crafters Barcelona and Techfems, when we partnered to bring both communities together under one space in May 2024.

Another pivotal moment came at the end of 2024 with another joint meetup: Cloud Native Barcelona 🤝 Cloud Native Lisboa. I owe a huge thank you to Fábio Sampaio for suggesting that collaboration and making it happen. It showed us the potential of connecting communities even beyond our city.

These successful ventures quickly inspired more local cross-community events. We soon forged another partnership between the Kafka and Grafana communities (Apache Kafka meetup with Grafana in Madrid), which has continued into 2025. My sincere gratitude to Olivia Taylor and Ana Vrsalovic, whose connection was instrumental in getting these collaborations off the ground and will continue beyond 2026 as we expand to include other communities.

These initial joint steps were just the beginning. This year, 2025, has seen these collaborations grow exponentially, transforming those initial seeds into an interconnected network that spans multiple communities, cities, and technologies. Working together has multiplied our impact.

The 2025 Collaborative Calendar: Connecting the Dots in Action

Reviewing this year’s meetups, a pattern emerges: we are seeing an increase in joint meetups.

All those collaborations have been, and I am sure will continue to be, very rewarding.

Beyond the impressive numbers, the real reward of this collaborative approach is the synergy it creates. Simply put, joint ventures lower the organizational burden: finding hosts and speakers. By co-organizing, we share the workload, access diverse networks, and gain exposure to users and technologies we might not see in our core groups alone.

As Luca Berton noted after one of our cross-community events, “These cross-community meetups (Grafana, Kafka, Snowflake) are exactly where innovation happens“. In fact, by joining three different communities, we actually achieved an all-women speaker lineup, a rare and rewarding occurrence.

While our collaborative formula boosts audience size and exposure, it doesn’t automatically solve for deep-seated systemic issues. The reality of community work, as I’ve experienced repeatedly this year, is the persistent struggle to consistently find diverse voices from underrepresented groups for our speaker lineups. We must also seriously examine why we don’t see a proportional representation of diverse attendees.

While creating an inclusive conference with diverse voices is something we are getting better at, and we can influence as attendees, speakers, and sponsors, as meetup organizers, we face a tough, immediate decision: cancel an event until we achieve a diverse lineup, or proceed with a homogeneous one. Meetups are planned in weeks, not months, leaving us a narrow margin to pivot.

It’s not enough to be welcoming and inclusive. We must actively investigate the systemic barriers that prevent certain groups from attending or participating in meetups.

This continuous effort is a central part of my commitment as a community builder in the local community.

My resolution for 2026 is to move beyond good intentions and establish a data-driven approach.

I will begin gathering concrete data on the diversity of speakers and attendees. Once we have this baseline, we can explore and measure additional, targeted initiatives beyond our joint meetups to create truly inclusive spaces.

The journey of joint meetups in 2025 demonstrated that we are stronger together in technical collaboration. However, this combined strength should be intentionally leveraged to drive a more profound change. True allyship for systemic justice is not merely welcoming individuals. It is the commitment to dismantle the systemic barriers that prevent proportional representation in our communities and, by extension, the wider industry.

Our collaborative formula, connecting community groups across cities and technologies, is just one such initiative.

By committing to a data-driven approach in 2026, we are transitioning from recognizing the challenge to actively measuring and targeting the underlying structures of inequality, ensuring our local organizing efforts are a core engine for systemic change in tech.

A Speaker Rider is a Tool for Allyship

I’m thrilled to share my personal Speaking Rider for conferences. It’s an adaptation of the traditional concept, evolving from merely outlining A/V needs to serving as a vital instrument for inclusion at events.

« We need to hear from more diverse voices and create safe spaces for everyone to feel welcome, and I hope to play a part in achieving that with this speaker rider »

As a speaker, I recognize the privilege of being invited to the stage. This privilege carries a responsibility: to use my platform to ensure that the communities I join are welcoming, diverse, and safe. My Rider is a simple way for organizers to know exactly where I stand.

Diversity & Representation

My core requirement is straightforward: I will only participate in events that demonstrate a clear and strategic commitment to diversity and inclusion. This must be evident in the content, the speakers, and the organizing team.

Before I agree to speak, I will review your speaker lineup and the organizing team.

My absolute line in the sand is clear: I will not participate if I am the only woman in the speaker lineup. I stand by the philosophy that a single voice is a token, not a representation.

I want to see a diverse organization. The event organizing committee itself should be aware of and actively address gender, racial, and other systemic imbalances. Diversity is not just a stage issue; it must be baked into the event’s leadership.

Accessibility Matters! The venue, stage, and event space must be designed to accommodate all individuals, regardless of their physical abilities. If the event is not accessible to individuals who use mobility aids, have sensory needs, or require quiet spaces, be transparent about these limitations. Community events cannot always afford the perfect venues and means, but can clarify the situation beforehand.

The organization should care about inclusive language (e.g., avoiding jargon, ableist slurs, and gendered language). The event’s promotion, content, and internal communication must reflect this sensitivity.

The Code of Conduct

A Code of Conduct (CoC) is foundational for any inclusive event. However, a CoC is worthless without dedicated enforcement. This is a crucial element of my rider: the commitment to a CoC must be backed by transparent action. This means clearly informing attendees how to report any incident, from harassment to discrimination, and ensuring those reports are acted upon.

A dedicated and trained CoC team is essential. The individuals responsible for CoC response must be clearly identifiable and, when possible, solely devoted to this task during the event, not diverted by logistics, A/V duties, or other organizational responsibilities. They are required to undergo compulsory training on how to effectively and compassionately receive, investigate, and resolve incident reports. I highly recommend resources such as Lian Li’s dedicated CoC training video and scenarios.

I strongly recommend including at least one external, trusted community member (who is neither an event team member nor an organizer) on the CoC committee. This provides objectivity, specialized experience, and builds trust with attendees in case they want to report one of the organizers.

When an incident occurs, the focus must be on the reporter’s safety and well-being. A public, yet vague, CoC log is recommended to demonstrate that reports are taken seriously and action is being taken.

Recommended Viewing & Resources

For organizers who are serious about building better communities, I recommend this talk on intentional allyship and event organizing:

• Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Building Better Communities by Lian Li

This talk explores the challenges of building communities, the distinction between diversity and inclusion, and the importance of intentional strategy over mere good intentions.

The movement to create inclusive riders is a collective one. I’m indebted to the resources that shaped this document:

• The foundational principles of community and belonging from the work of Better Allies
• Richard Bradshaw’s Speaker Rider provided a clear, actionable example that set the standard for many of us in the tech speaking circuit. See https://thefriendlytester.co.uk/speaker-rider

This talk was presented at Grafana & Friends Amsterdam meetup, a joint meetup with the Amsterdam Apache Kafka and Amsterdam Data Streaming communities.

Grafana is powerful on its own, but its true potential lies in its vibrant community of plugin developers. In this talk, we’ll explore how community plugins extend Grafana’s core functionality, enabling you to connect to a broader range of data sources and visualize your data in new ways. As a practical example, we’ll introduce the Kafka Data Source plugin and demonstrate how it lets you directly query and visualize Kafka topic data in your dashboards, bypassing the need for intermediate storage or external services.

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/imma-valls_grafana-kafka-snowflake-activity-7373630478538592256-u5kI
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/confluent_there-are-so-many-more-chances-to-join-a-activity-7372348683499237377-cgBk
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lucaberton_grafana-apachekafka-snowflake-activity-7379440054693158913-nIwF

Earlier this year, Grafana Labs was a proud sponsor of HackUPC — one of the biggest student hackathons in Europe — at BarcelonaTech. The event drew more than 700 passionate tech students from around the globe, all racing the clock in a 36-hour burst of creativity to build web, mobile, and hardware projects.

As a developer advocate here at Grafana Labs — where we are big believers in hackathons — it was a privilege to participate as mentor and judge in the HackUPC 2025 event. For our challenge, we focused primarily on the theme of sustainability and asked a set of students to leverage Grafana to raise awareness of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Shout out to Niki Manoledaki, senior software engineer at Grafana Labs and a contributor to the CNCF Environmental Sustainability Technical Advisory Group (TAG ENV), for inspiring this sustainability-related challenge! 

The students in our group could approach the challenge in two ways: create compelling data visualizations using open data to reveal meaningful trends or develop an innovative Grafana app plugin to provide unique insights or functionalities related to their chosen SDG(s). 

It was inspiring to see how the hackers used their creativity to tackle global issues and showcase the power of data. In this post, we recap and celebrate some of the Grafana hackathon projects that emerged from the event.

Project Graf-Anna: tracking global climate and health trends 

The team behind Graf-Anna wanted to tell a data-driven story to illustrate the urgency of climate change, as outlined by the SDGs, and recognized Grafana as a powerful tool to help achieve this goal.

In particular, this team of hackers wanted to explore the connections between industrial development (SDG 9), responsible consumption (SDG 12), climate change action (SDG 13), and their effects on the planet and human health. The result was a comprehensive Grafana dashboard that visualizes the historical impact of the Industrial Revolution and human activity on CO2 emissions, climate trends, and health. It’s an excellent educational tool that uses historical and live data to create a compelling narrative.

In the Grafana dashboard below, the team tracked trends in global emissions, temperature variation, natural disasters, CO2 per capita, and life expectancy.

They also tracked land usage, current world emissions per country, and CO2 emissions from deforestation.

Lastly, they built a conclusion panel to breakdown key takeaways from the data.

The team behind Graf-Anna had some pretty ambitious goals from the start. They initially wanted to build a custom Grafana app plugin with advanced features, including integrating LLMs for insights. However, they hit some technical difficulties and ran into time constraints, which forced them to pivot their strategy. They decided to source, integrate, and visualize existing data to tell a clear story — which was still a big accomplishment on its own. 

Their project reinforced the power of Grafana data visualization as a storytelling tool, even without custom code. It’s a great example of learning and adapting on the fly, which hackathons are all about.

Peaceful Protest Tracker: insights for sustainable development

While Graf-Anna focused on global climate trends, another team used data to tackle a different real-world issue. The Peaceful Protest Tracker: Headlines vs. Reality project promoted peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development with accountable institutions, in line with SDG 16. The team wanted to apply their skills in web development, AI, and data visualization to a compelling and personal topic, inspired by the confusing and often contradictory news coverage following a tragic railway collapse in Serbia. 

Their solution was a dynamic Grafana dashboard that visualized how protests unfolded in near real-time, pulling data from various media outlets. The dashboard used a semi-live map to pinpoint protest locations.

It also included features like sentiment analysis and keyword usage comparisons to create a powerful example of storytelling with data.

This was a seriously ambitious project, and the team faced the major challenge of designing a complex system architecture connecting various technologies. They used Python for web scraping, the Gemini 2.5 Flash API for sentiment analysis, a Spring Boot backend, and MongoDB Atlas to store the data before visualizing it all in Grafana. 

The team learned how to work with Grafana from scratch and should be incredibly proud of their persistence in bringing such a complex idea to life in 36 hours. It’s a fantastic example of using technology to address a critical real-world issue and what can be accomplished with a lot of determination (and probably a few too many potato chips!).

Project Musigrafs: visualizing global music trends  

We wrapped our hackathon highlights with a project unrelated to the sustainability theme, but still showed a lot of creativity and told a powerful story through data. 

The Musigrafs project was inspired by the fast-paced nature of the music world and the difficulty of tracking emerging trends using existing apps like Spotify or YouTube Music. The team set out to build a data-driven web app that captures the “pulse of global music trends — live.” The result was a Grafana dashboard that visualizes top genres by country, common musical keys, and real-time audio features like energy and tempo for top hits. It’s an excellent tool for aspiring musicians to understand the market and kickstart their careers.

The team initially struggled to display the map in their desired format and had to explore other repositories for inspiration. To get the global information just right, they used GeoJSON, which helped them represent the countries’ borders. Connecting their GitHub custom GeoJSON to Grafana presented a hurdle, but the team managed to get the raw GeoJSON file contents with help from mentors and Grot AI. Ultimately, they were proud of the visual quality and clarity of their plots and successfully integrated real-time data, which was a core goal of their project.

Closing thoughts 

The Grafana support and judging team at HackUPC was impressed by how quickly hackers grasped complex concepts, and we learned so much from their approaches and challenges. What made their projects successful was their fantastic storytelling, best practices in creating beautiful and impactful visualizations, and great time management skills under pressure! We felt privileged to be there and connect with the next generation of tech talent and data storytellers. 

We want to thank the HackUPC volunteer organization, all the participating students, and all the fellow judges. Without your efforts, this would not have been possible. We can’t wait for HackUPC next year! 

In the meantime, you can find us at HackSheffield10, another student hackathon event at the University of Sheffield in November, where we’ll continue celebrating students’ passions and the power of data to make a difference.

Kubernetes, paired with Prometheus monitoring, Grafana visualization, and alerting, has transformed cloud native development. In this webinar, you’ll learn how Grafana offers developers and SREs a quick-to-value and straightforward solution for monitoring their Kubernetes infrastructure. You’ll learn how Grafana Cloud and a simple deployment of Grafana Alloy allow you to monitor your clusters with an all-new, traversable UI and out-of-the-box metrics, logs, dashboards, and alerts.

What you’ll learn

1. How Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Grafana changed the cloud-native landscape
2. The cost of improper k8s monitoring
3. What telemetry should you be collecting
4. The power of Grafana Alloy
5. Collecting Kubernetes metrics and logs
6. The speed-to-value and ease of troubleshooting with Kubernetes Monitoring in Grafana Cloud

RSVP: https://grafana.com/go/webinar/kubernetes-monitoring-with-grafana-cloud/

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7369761360840290305/