In episode 79 of o11ycast, Hamel Husain joins the o11ycast crew to discuss the challenges of monitoring AI systems, why off-the-shelf metrics can be misleading, and how error analysis is the key to making AI models more reliable. Plus, insights into how Honeycomb built its Query Assistant and what teams should prioritize when working with AI observability.
Mar 18, 2025•47 min
Episode 78 of o11ycast examines the world of OpenTelemetry Transformation Language (OTTL) with Tyler Helmuth and Evan Bradley, the maintainers behind this innovative framework. Discover how OTTL enables powerful telemetry data transformations, its practical applications, and what lies ahead for OpenTelemetry's transformative ecosystem.
Feb 11, 2025•42 min
In episode 77 of o11ycast, Charity, Martin, Ken, and Jess welcome Jeremy Morrell to talk about OpenTelemetry, the future of observability, and how small teams can get started. Jeremy shares stories of debugging breakthroughs, adopting standards, and building tools that help engineers focus on what matters.
Jan 15, 2025•45 min
In episode 76 of o11ycast, Jessica Kerr and Martin Thwaites speak with Andrew Keller, Principal Engineer at ObservIQ, about the evolving world of telemetry and observability. They explore the role of OpenTelemetry, the groundbreaking Open Agent Management Protocol (OpAMP), and how open standards are shaping the future of data pipelines. Learn how ObservIQ’s innovations help standardize telemetry collection and empower organizations with dynamic, scalable tools for managing their observability ec...
Dec 17, 2024•39 min
In episode 75 of o11ycast, Daniel Ravenstone and Adriana Villela dive into the challenges of adopting observability and OpenTelemetry in modern organizations. From breaking down vendor loyalty to getting developers to see the value of instrumentation, they explore how to foster a culture of curiosity and collaboration to make observability a core part of development.
Nov 05, 2024•46 min
In episode 74 of o11ycast, Liudmila Molkova unpacks the importance of semantic conventions in telemetry. The discussion highlights the challenge of agreeing on naming conventions, the role of working groups in maintaining these standards, and the potential for future integration with AI technologies. Liudmila underscores the importance of a shared, vendor-agnostic approach to telemetry, enabling smoother interoperability across platforms.
Oct 22, 2024•45 min
In episode 73 of o11ycast, Jessica Kerr, Martin Thwaites, and Austin Parker speak with Animesh Koratana, founder and CEO of PlayerZero, about the future of observability with AI. Discover how PlayerZero leverages LLMs to democratize institutional knowledge, improve software quality, and make problem-solving more accessible to all engineers.
Sep 18, 2024•39 min
Episode 72 of o11ycast explores the world of mobile observability with Hanson Ho, Android Architect at Embrace. Hanson unpacks how mobile's diverse device landscape impacts data collection and performance monitoring, the role of OpenTelemetry in simplifying these challenges, and the importance of tailoring observability strategies to real-world user experiences. Join hosts Charity, Jess, and Austin for this insightful examination of an often overlooked observability niche.
Aug 21, 2024•43 min
In Episode 71 of o11ycast, Jessica Kerr and Austin Parker sit down with Shir Chorev to delve into the nuances of incorporating Generative AI into applications and testing the outcomes. Shir shares her journey from a data scientist to founding Deepchecks, driven by her vision to enhance the quality and reliability of machine learning and AI in real-world scenarios. Gain valuable insights on how LLMs are reshaping the development landscape, making advanced projects more accessible, and strategies ...
Jun 20, 2024•41 min
In episode 70 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Dan Gomez Blanco of Skyscanner. Dan shares his expertise on evangelizing better observability practices at Skyscanner and offers insights from his experience on the OpenTelemetry governance committee. Discover how observability can minimize organizational costs, the future of auto-instrumentation, and valuable advice on detecting and avoiding over-instrumentation. Plus, learn about the importance of tail sampling and OpenTelemetry’s semantic ...
May 21, 2024•46 min
In episode 69 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Charles Herring of WitFoo. Together they dive deep into the world of cybercrime investigations. Discover the intricate processes of data collection and analysis in the realm of cybersecurity, all while balancing the imperative of cost-effectiveness and citizen privacy.
Apr 24, 2024•49 min
In episode 68 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Michele Mancioppi of Dash0. This talk examines what it takes to make observability more accessible to non-experts in the space. Additional topics explored include the differences between monitoring and observability and Michele's shift from staff engineering to product management.
Mar 19, 2024•47 min
In episode 67 of o11ycast, Martin, Jess, and Liz dive deep on performance engineering. Pulling heavily from Liz’s extensive experience in the field, they share insights on utilizing data to balance resources like developers’ time and infrastructure costs. Listeners can expect to learn helpful lessons on infrastructure optimization, performance data accessibility, and why Honeycomb embraced Kubernetes.
Feb 27, 2024•44 min
In episode 66 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Iris Dyrmishi of Miro. They dive deep on what it takes to build an observability platform with open source tooling. Additionally, they explore the expense of outsourcing observability, the journey from logs to traces, tips for adopting new tools, and the spread of the FinOps movement.
Jan 17, 2024•35 min
In episode 65 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Sophie DeBenedetto of GitHub. This talk explores observability at GitHub, the value of tracing, the BEAM ecosystem, the Elixir language, and insights on leveraging observability at scale.
Nov 21, 2023•36 min
In episode 64 of o11ycast, Jessica Kerr and Martin Thwaites speak with Austin Parker of Honeycomb. This talk explores how observability within an organization provides a shared language between teams to discuss reliability. Other topics examined include numeronyms in the tech space, OpenTelemetry, and Kubernetes.
Oct 24, 2023•35 min
In episode 63 of o11ycast, Charity and Jess speak with Lukas Fittl of pganalyze about database observability. This talk explores relational database management systems (DBMS), the open source library Sqlcommenter , query plans, and insights on supporting application teams.
Oct 04, 2023•36 min
In episode 62 of o11ycast, Jessica Kerr and Martin Thwaites speak with Doug Ramirez of Uplight. This conversation covers many aspects of adopting OpenTelemetry including integration concerns, social challenges, building trust, and running it at scale. Listen in to find out why after 35 years of diverse experiences across several industries, Doug’s excited about observability.
Sep 07, 2023•37 min
In episode 61 of o11ycast, Jessica and Martin speaks with Heidi Waterhouse of Sym. Together they explore the sensations of proprioception and interoception, how they relate to the future of observability, and the ways machine learning could assist in simplifying that future.
May 31, 2023•43 min
In episode 60 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Todd Gardner of TrackJS and Winston Hearn of Honeycomb. This talk explores customer-centric observability, Request Metrics, Core Web Vitals, and insights on optimizing observability across different browsers.
Apr 27, 2023•46 min
In episode 59 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Laura Maguire of Jeli and Nick Travaglini of Honeycomb. They unpack Learning From Incidents (LFI), resilience engineering, process tracing, safety science, key takeaways from the LFI Conference, and the human side of observability.
Apr 13, 2023•49 min
In episode 58 of o11ycast, Jess and Liz speak with Brenna Moore of Second Dinner. This conversation explores game development and the many ways the industry has evolved, the infrastructure side of gaming, semantic conventions within the code, and career opportunities for developers aspiring to enter the field.
Feb 15, 2023•39 min
In episode 57 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Shahar Azulay of Groundcover about monitoring Kubernetes applications, improving the UI experience of observability tools, and utilizing APMs. Shahar shares lessons learned from his storied career in R&D leadership positions, cyber security, machine learning and AI, as well as general advice for developers, SREs, project leaders, and executives.
Jan 19, 2023•40 min
In episode 55 of o11ycast, Charity and Liz speak with Martin Thwaites, a developer advocate at Honeycomb. They discuss the dev side of observability, exploring topics like logging pipelines, the pain of context switching for developers, the significance of the DevOps movement, best practices for scaling engineering teams, and outside-in test-driven development.
Sep 01, 2022•32 min
In episode 54 of o11ycast, Liz Fong-Jones and Jessica Kerr speak with Alex Boton of Lightstep. They discuss Alex’s book Cloud Native Observability with OpenTelemetry, OTel documentation and community, vendor lock-in, and the pain of instrumentation.
Jun 30, 2022•39 min
In episode 53 of o11ycast, Charity Majors and Jessica Kerr speak with Jean Yang of Akita Software about legacy software, API-driven observability, tips for improving team efficiency, and insights on how observability can inform programming languages.
Jun 20, 2022•29 min
In episode 52 of o11ycast, Charity and Jess speak with Alex Hidalgo of Nobl9. Alex shares his formative experiences advocating for reliability, insights on utilizing error budgets, and the attributes needed to leverage senior-level influence within a socio-technical environment.
May 31, 2022•39 min
In episode 51 of o11ycast, Charity Majors and Jessica Kerr are joined by Henrik Rexed of Dynatrace. This conversation covers a wide array of software and observability topics including trends in performance engineering, insights on minimizing system complexity, the shortcomings of auto-instrumentation, and best practices for avoiding vendor lock-in.
Apr 13, 2022•38 min
In episode 50 of o11ycast, Charity Majors and Jessica Kerr are joined by Benjamin Wilms of Steadybit. This conversation examines chaos engineering before production, identifying weak spots in your distributed system, and the health of the tech industry at large.
Apr 01, 2022•33 min
In episode 49 of o11ycast, Charity Majors and Jessica Kerr speak with Fred Hebert of Honeycomb about incident commanders. Listen in for insights on the role of SREs, the educational value in incidents, improving feedback cycles, and choosing the right OKRs.
Mar 07, 2022•40 min