Workshop delivered with Arthur Picerna at Dutch Cloud Native Day 2026.

OpenTelemetry has become an essential open source framework for standardizing telemetry data. In this beginner-friendly hands-on lab, you’ll walk through the journey of instrumenting an application with OpenTelemetry and sending metrics, logs, and traces to the Grafana LGTM stack (Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, and Prometheus for metrics).

You’ll learn common instrumentation approaches, such as adding application-level telemetry using the OpenTelemetry SDK, collecting basic infrastructure metrics with the OpenTelemetry Collector, and implementing cross-service communication with zero-code eBPF instrumentation. You’ll also apply practical customization techniques, such as enriching and sampling spans, tuning metrics, and adding your own signals when auto-instrumentation isn’t enough.

By instrumenting a sample application step by step, you’ll leave this lab with a clear roadmap for choosing the right OpenTelemetry instrumentation approach within your own environment.

By the end of the three hours, you will:

• Have a core understanding of the OpenTelemetry project and its key components
• Select the right level of instrumentation based on various use cases
• Understand how zero-code eBPF instrumentation helps reveal cross-service communication
• Instrument applications using OpenTelemetry SDKs
• Apply end-to-end instrumentation patterns to get started quickly and improve over time
• Send telemetry to the Grafana stack and understand how it’s used

Social

• https://lnkd.in/p/e9NCwmnm
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cloudnativenl_ebpf-grafana-opentelemetry-activity-7516807789965578240-ZoaL

Workshop delivered with Tom Donohue at Cloud Native Days Nowrway 2026

Incidents are expensive, stressful, and lead to poor user experiences. The good news is that they’re also preventable. With the right tools and practices, you can uncover and address performance issues before they affect your users.

Performance issues are easier to address when you find them before your users do. In this beginner-friendly, hands-on workshop, you’ll learn how to combine load testing and observability to understand how your applications behave under load.

You’ll write and run k6 scripts, simulate API traffic, define checks and performance thresholds, and analyze results in Grafana to identify potential bottlenecks.

We’ll then explore how to scale beyond a single machine using the k6 Operator to orchestrate distributed load tests on Kubernetes.

By the end of this two-hour workshop, you’ll be able to:

• Write and run k6 scripts to test APIs under load.
• Use checks and thresholds to evaluate responses and performance.
• Interpret test results in Grafana.
• Understand how the k6 Operator distributes tests across Kubernetes runners.

Requirements:

• Laptop with WiFi, a browser, terminal, and code editor
• Git
• Docker with Docker Compose
• kind and kubectl – kind runs the local Kubernetes cluster using Docker

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cloud-native-days-norway_cndn2026-cloudnative-confernece-activity-7493992431944740864-jk_w
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cloud-native-days-norway_cloudnativedaysnorway-cloudnative-observabilityreliability-activity-7505890843401285632-mNNn

RSVP: https://grafana.com/go/webinar/mastering-code-based-instrumentation-with-opentelemetry-and-grafana/

A practical guide to code-based OpenTelemetry instrumentation with Grafana

Building on our popular “Intro to OpenTelemetry” webinar, we are excited to present you with this webinar focused on advanced OpenTelemetry instrumentation techniques and the innovative use cases it unlocks.

In this live demo and Q&A, Grafana Labs experts will show how to add custom spans, metrics, and attributes that capture the application and business context zero-code instrumentation cannot always see. You’ll learn how to apply OpenTelemetry semantic conventions, send OTLP telemetry to Grafana Cloud, and use Grafana Cloud Application Observability and Grafana dashboards to turn that data into actionable insights.

You’ll also see how richer OpenTelemetry context can support AI-assisted investigations in Grafana, helping teams correlate signals, identify likely root causes, and understand business impact.

What you’ll learn

1. Learn when to use zero-code instrumentation and when code-based instrumentation can provide deeper context.
2. See how application telemetry can reveal performance patterns and quantify business impact.
3. Visualize and analyze OpenTelemetry data with Grafana and Grafana Cloud Application Observability.
4. Learn how custom telemetry and semantic context can improve AI-assisted investigations with Grafana Assistant.

Socials

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/harrabab-singh_grafana-opentelemetry-observability-share-7487545837905158144-YeCn/?

This talk was presented at Open South Code 2026.

Grafana is powerful on its own. However, 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, or start creating your own.

As a practical example, we’ll introduce the Kafka Data Source plugin and demonstrate how it lets you query and visualize Kafka topic data directly in your dashboards, eliminating the need for intermediate storage or external services. We’ll also demo how to build your first plugin.

Demo repository: https://github.com/thopewell/grafana-kafka-datasource-demo

Social

• https://es.linkedin.com/posts/imma-valls_opensouthcode2026-opensouthcode2026-opensource-activity-7475106629181534210-ELsQ

RSVP: https://www.meetup.com/grafana-and-friends-madrid/events/314436082

Antes del verano, traemos la edición local de GrafanaCON 2026 a Madrid.

Y esta vez, de la mano de la comunidad amiga, Cloud Native Madrid 🎊

Te esperamos en Celonis para conocer algunas de las últimas novedades en el ecosistema de Grafana que se han desvelado en GrafanaCON 2026, y para conectar con la comunidad local.

📍Ubicación:
Celonis: Pl. de Manuel Gómez-Moreno, 2 Madrid | https://maps.app.goo.gl/tSeuMHXwwvaTC9VH9

📅 Agenda:
18:30: Abrimos puertas y bienvenida 👋
18:45: 🎙️ “Recapitulando la Keynote de GrafanaCON 2026“, Imma Valls – Staff Developer Advocate en Grafana Labs.
Presentaremos los puntos clave y anuncios más relevantes de la keynote de GrafanaCON 2026.
19:15: 🎙️ “Cómo k6 v2.0 reduce las barreras para pruebas proactivas con creación asistida por IA, secuencias de comandos visuales y más”, Natacha de Jesús – Product Designer en Grafana Labs y Alberto Fernández, Staff Solutions Engineer en Grafana Labs.
Los errores y los cuellos de botella son inevitables, pero no conviene que lleguen a los usuarios. En esta sesión, mostraremos cómo k6 v2.0 reduce las barreras para las pruebas proactivas. Con la creación de código asistida por IA, la creación de scripts visuales mediante k6 Studio, las aserciones avanzadas para validar el comportamiento de la aplicación y un ecosistema nativo compatible con cualquier protocolo, la última versión de k6 facilita la validación del rendimiento y la corrección de errores antes de que afecten a producción.
19:45 – 21:00: Networking con comida y bebidas

No faltará el picoteo post-evento después de las charlas. ¿Te unes al evento? Sería un placer verte y charlar contigo 🎉 ¡Nos vemos!

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/imma-valls_grafanacon-madrid-observabilidad-activity-7464944702727868418-pQ46
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/imma-valls_grafanacon-remotework-companyculture-activity-7467111452668170240-o66e

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/

RSVP: https://www.meetup.com/grafana-friends-amsterdam/events/314419143

A taste of GrafanaCON is coming to you, Amsterdam!

📕 Agenda
17:30 Open doors.
18:00 Food & Drinks
18:30 Talks start

1️⃣ GrafanaCON recap presentation
Imma Valls, Staff Developer Advocate at Grafana Labs
We will present the key points and most relevant announcements from the GrafanaCON 2026 keynote.
2️⃣ Peripheral observability: Why 72px micro-dashboards beat wall displays in incident response
Gerard de Jong, Aspiring Software Super-villain at ABN AMRO Bank
Gerard de Jong used to believe the same lie everyone else does: More screen = more observability.
But then he hacked a Stream Deck to show 72×72 pixel Grafana dashboard panels, always visible in his peripheral vision, and it completely changed how he handles incidents. Suddenly: No more hunting for the right browser tab. No more joining calls are already behind. No more surprises when an alert fires.
While wall displays are great for high-level status, they fail during the “fog of war” of an active incident. Peripheral vision is tuned for motion and patterns, not dense charts. That’s why car dashboards, cockpits, and game HUDs all put tiny signals just below the line of sight.
In this lightning talk, Gerard demonstrates how and why small displays make this possible (be it on a Stream Deck, a Raspberry Pi, or everything in between), the layouts that actually work, and why micro-dashboards let you often see anomalies before alerts fire while everyone else is still opening Grafana.
This is not a toy – it’s a practical hack for real on-call life.
Learn:

• How 72×72 pixels can outperform a wall display.
• How to design Grafana for glance-first awareness.
• Secure Grafana API integration via encrypted tokens.
• How to escape tab blindness during incidents.
• Ready-to-use patterns for Stream Deck + Grafana.

3️⃣ Living on the Edge: Where IT and OT Meet
Benoit Schipper, Field CTO at HCS Company
The industrial world is no longer an island. As the gap between Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) continues to shrink, the “Edge” has become the critical frontier for innovation, data processing, and real-time decision-making.
In this session, we explore the practical realities of industrial digitalization through the lens of a Siemens IOT2050 setup. We will dive into how this hardware acts as a gateway, translating the rugged, protocol-heavy language of the factory floor into the scalable, data-driven environment of modern IT.
In this presentation, I will touch upon the following:

• The core architecture is required to bridge PLC environments with cloud or local IT infrastructures.
• Why we chose the Siemens IOT2050 as our preferred “Edge” device for balancing industrial durability with open-source flexibility.
• Mastering the constraints: Key lessons learned from deploying a “living” setup that manages data at the source while navigating the challenges of limited RAM on the edge.

Whether you are working in IT or OT as an engineer or architect, this 20-minute deep dive provides insights for navigating the intersection of hardware, connectivity, and open-source tools, and the ultimate reason for liberating data on the industrial edge.

🏢 Location
HCS Company: Anthony Fokkerweg 61, Amsterdam | https://maps.app.goo.gl/LPMZKBzB7MutGrZb6.
The HCS Company office is easily accessible by both car and public transport. You can park your car on their premises; ample parking is beyond the barrier. If you come by public transport, you can get off at the Henk Sneevlietweg metro station; from there, it is a 10-minute walk.

Many thanks to our good friends at HCS Company, who have kindly offered to host us at their Amsterdam office 🫶

We are looking forward to seeing you 🎉!

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/imma-valls_grafanacon-grafanacon-grafanacon-activity-7463541880299909120-Z6ns

This talk was presented alongside Juraj Michálak at the Grafana & Friends Madrid meetup, a joint meetup with the Madrid Apache Kafka community.

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 enables you to directly query and visualize Kafka topic data in your dashboards, eliminating the need for intermediate storage or external services.

Demo repository: https://github.com/thopewell/grafana-kafka-datasource-demo

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7455523937658126336/

RSVP: https://www.meetup.com/grafana-and-friends-barcelona/events/313813784

¡Barcelona se prepara para GrafanaCON 2026! Por primera vez, el evento aterriza en nuestra ciudad del 20 al 22 de abril y queremos celebrarlo junto a la comunidad local.

Durante el meetup, sortearemos 3 entradas 🎟️ entre quienes nos acompañéis. ¡Una oportunidad de oro para asegurar vuestro lugar en el evento del año!

Te esperamos en Schwarz Digits Spain para compartir charlas, novedades y mucho networking.

📍Ubicación:
c/ Bergara 13, Barcelona | https://maps.app.goo.gl/zd6h3BGzHNxgAgjT6

📅 Agenda:

18:30: Bienvenida 👋
18:45: 🎙️ “Desmontando el mito: ¿Es seguro nuestro ecosistema Open Source?”, Nuria Revuelta – Account Executive en Grafana Labs
Charla que explora los principales mitos sobre la seguridad del Open Source, analizando qué hay de cierto y qué no en las percepciones más comunes. También abordaremos cómo implementar buenas prácticas para garantizar un entorno de trabajo seguro utilizando OSS.
19:15: 🎙️ “Cómo crear un sorteo interactivo con Grafana usando el Infinity plugin”
Imma Valls – Staff Developer Advocate en Grafana Labs
En este rato vamos a montar un dashboard en directo que lea las respuestas del formulario de participación en el sorteo de entradas con el plugin Infinity. Visualizaremos algunos datos (no privados!) y configuraremos un panel que elija aleatoriamente y de forma transparente a 3 ganador@s de las entradas. Sin bases de datos, solo Grafana y un Google Sheet.
20:00 – 21:00: Networking con pizzas y bebidas 🍻🍕

¡Nos vemos allí! 👋

Grafana & Friends Barcelona.

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/imma-valls_grafana-cybersecurity-techcommunity-activity-7444643428560207872-U6Ay

Recording:

Repo: https://github.com/immavalls/kyverno-observability-as-code-kubecon26eu

The adoption of Kyverno solves the challenge of Policy-as-Code. However, a new question emerges for platform engineers: what happens when a slow policy rule adds latency? A slow admission webhook can degrade performance across the k8s cluster.
Tracing the webhook’s lifecycle is the fastest way to pinpoint any bottlenecking rule.

The next step in your GitOps journey is to make your monitoring as declarative as your policies. In the live demo, you’ll learn how to monitor Kyverno’s operational cycle using Prometheus, Tempo, and Grafana. We’ll set SLOs and enable real-time alerts with observability-as-code, including metrics and alerts for policy failure rates or slow webhooks, and use OpenTelemetry tracing to pinpoint what is causing a delay in the admission process.

If you manage policies as code, don’t let silent performance bottlenecks threaten your cluster stability. Join to learn concrete steps needed to close your GitOps loop and achieve operational control over Kyverno.

This talk was delivered at KyvernoCon, a co-located event at KubeCon CloudNativeCon Europe 2026: https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/3d9bd77f04055bd504873cea34432510

Social

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kyvernoplatform_kyverno-devsecops-kubernetes-activity-7417550328943788035-Qt_X/
• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7441880447938285569/
• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7441838568878047232/