devopsdays Portland 2026

Eric D. Schabell

Eric is renowned in the development community as a speaker, lecturer, author, baseball expert, open source maintainer and CNCF Ambassador. As Technology Advocate Lead at SUSE, he chooses roles that allow him to help the world understand the challenges they are facing with cloud native, development, and observability. He brings a unique perspective to the stage with a professional life dedicated to sharing his deep expertise of open source technologies and organizations. More on https://www.schabell.org.


Session

09-08
15:00
120min
Choose Your Own CNCF Observability Project Adventure
Eric D. Schabell

Great observability begins with great instrumentation! We know it's hard to decide where to start your observability journey, so we've come up with a perfect introduction to this observability workshop collection getting you hands-on with the best CNCF open source cloud native observability projects available. Attendees can pick their own cloud native observability learning path (https://o11y-workshops.gitlab.io) in this session from the following workshops:

OpenTelemetry (traces) - Learn how to adopt OpenTelemetry by instrumenting a sample application with spans and metrics. You’ll leave with an understanding of how telemetry travels and be ready to bring OpenTelemetry to your project. The workshop is self-paced and available online, so attendees can continue to explore after the event: https://o11y-workshops.gitlab.io/workshop-opentelemetry

OpenTelemetry for Java Developers (Java) - Ready to go deeper with OpenTelemetry? This workshop guides you through setting up OTel and instrumenting a Java application locally to collect and analyze trace data. You'll work hands-on across automatic, programmatic, and manual instrumentation, explore your traces in Jaeger, and link metrics to traces via exemplars. The workshop is self-paced and available online, so attendees can continue to explore after the event: https://o11y-workshops.gitlab.io/workshop-otel-developers/

Prometheus (metrics) - During the workshop, you will install Prometheus, collect metrics, and learn how to effectively run it in your observability stack. The workshop is self-paced and available online, so attendees can continue to explore after the event: https://o11y-workshops.gitlab.io/workshop-prometheus

Fluent Bit (pipelines) - This workshop will guide you through the open source project Fluent Bit, what it is, a basic installation, and setting up a first cloud native observability pipeline project. The workshop is self-paced and available online, so attendees can continue to explore after the event: https://o11y-workshops.gitlab.io/workshop-fluentbit

Perses (visualization) - Great observability is impossible without great visualization! Learn how to adopt truly open visualization by installing Perses, exploring the provided tooling, tinkering with its API, and then get your hands dirty building your first dashboard in no time! The workshop is self-paced and available online, so attendees can continue to explore after the event: https://o11y-workshops.gitlab.io/workshop-perses

Workshops
Room 327