Code Red Newsletter #13

Good Telemetry is Boring (And That’s a Good Thing)

Hi there,

It’s been a minute. Our last edition dropped on July 4, and since then I’ve been offline (intentionally) - recharging in Croatia, catching up on sun and sleep, and enjoying life without alerts. But now I’m back - rested, rehydrated, and ready to dive back into what really matters: real users, real signals, and real observability.

This edition is all about Real User Monitoring - the kind that tells you not just what broke, but who it broke for, where it happened, and what’s downstream of that slow click or failed form.

In focus: Real User Monitoring

We just launched Dash0 Website Monitoring in Open Beta, and it’s our take on what Real User Monitoring should look like in a modern, OpenTelemetry-native stack. Traditional RUM tools give you vitals and page views - but they leave you guessing when something breaks. We believe observability should start where the user feels pain and end where the system caused it. That’s why we built a RUM experience that starts with the user - and ends at the exact backend span or service responsible. Built on OpenTelemetry, connected to your traces, and ready in two lines of JavaScript. This is observability from the outside in. From real sessions. From real people.

Just Launched: Dash0 Website Monitoring (Open Beta)

Websites are fast… until they aren’t. And when they fail, your users notice first - not your dashboards.

Dash0 Website Monitoring captures every real user session - clicks, page views, layout shifts, failed requests - and connects them directly to backend traces and spans. With native OpenTelemetry support and full-stack correlation, you get the full story: not just what went wrong, but where, why, and for whom.

• Track Web Vitals (LCP, FID, INP) across sessions
• Catch JavaScript errors, slow renders, and UX regressions
• See backend impact on frontend experience
• Monitor drop-offs and failed conversions
• Built on OpenTelemetry. Lightweight. Two-line install.

Explore Website Monitoring
Read the blog post

Setting Up OpenTelemetry on the Frontend Because I Hate Myself

In this instant classic, Hazel Weakly walks us through the very real pain of trying to instrument frontend apps with the OpenTelemetry Browser SDK. From context propagation to bridging traces between the browser and backend, it’s all here - messy, honest, and familiar.

Pro tip: Dash0 Website Monitoring handles all of that for you.

Read it here

OpenTelemetry for Mobile: Adoption Set to Triple

OTel is growing fast - and mobile is next. A recent survey shows OpenTelemetry usage in mobile development is expected to triple in the coming year. But the path there isn’t frictionless: gaps in context propagation, limited SDK support, and the challenge of correlating frontend and backend telemetry are real. Still, the direction is clear - mobile observability is no longer an afterthought.

Survey breakdown here

Riding the Wave: OTel Experts Share Observability Tips

OpenTelemetry is more than a spec - it's a movement. This piece recaps a panel discussion between OpenTelemetry experts on how to implement it well. Among the takeaways: don’t chase coverage at all costs, automate schema evolution, and above all, normalize your telemetry across teams. It’s a must-read and must-watch for anyone building or maintaining an OTel-based observability stack.

Read the article

Code RED Podcast: From OpsGenie to Actioner with Berkay Mollamustafaoglu

In this episode, Mirko Novakovic is joined by Berkay Mollamustafaoglu - founder of OpsGenie (acquired by Atlassian) and now CEO of Actioner - for a deep conversation on building tools that empower operations teams. They talk product strategy, customer-first growth, and why the future of incident response will be AI-augmented. Great insights from someone who’s built, sold, and built again.

Listen to the episode

What Does ‘Good’ Telemetry Look Like?

If you’ve ever stared at a metrics dashboard and thought, “This tells me absolutely nothing,” this one’s for you. In this practical post, Dan Gomez Blanco from New Relic outlines what separates good telemetry from the noise: structured fields, consistent naming, relevant metadata, and alignment with business objectives. It’s a solid primer for anyone wondering how to go from raw signals to real observability.

Read the post

Choice Cuts

It’s been a few weeks - and the community didn’t slow down. Here’s the best of what you may have missed while I was off chasing sunsets.

Unlock the Future of Digital Operations

Andrew Mallaband has been steadily dropping gold all year - from AI co-pilots to intent-based observability and telemetry pipelines that actually reflect user journeys. Now he’s packaged it all up into one essential resource: a curated directory of his work. If you’ve enjoyed the occasional Andrew drop in past issues of this newsletter, this one brings the full collection together.

Explore the collection

Application Logging in Python: Recipes for Observability

This guide walks Python developers through the fundamentals of logging done right. From choosing structured formats to aligning logs with OpenTelemetry context for trace correlation, it’s a practical deep dive with real examples and recommendations for production use.

Read the guide

Building Telemetry Pipelines with the OpenTelemetry Collector

A complete walkthrough for designing telemetry pipelines using the OTel Collector. Whether you're filtering spans, batching metrics, or exporting logs, this guide provides architectural patterns and implementation tips for a clean, composable pipeline setup.

Build your pipeline

How to Build Resilient Telemetry Pipelines

What happens when your collector crashes? This article answers that - covering gateway and high availability (HA) patterns, retry strategies, and collector failover designs. Ideal for anyone running critical workloads where telemetry loss isn’t an option.

Read the article

OTel Collector Feedback Survey

Love the OTel Collector? Hate it? Either way, the Collector SIG wants your feedback. This short survey helps guide priorities for future releases - and yes, they really do read the responses.

Take the survey

See You in Two Weeks

That wraps up this edition of the Code RED Newsletter - one that starts where it should: with the user.

From layout shifts to slow APIs, from JavaScript bugs to backend bottlenecks - observability is growing up. And it starts with tracing what real people actually experience.

We’ll be back on August 22 with fresh content, updates from the OpenTelemetry ecosystem, and more stories from the frontlines of platform engineering.

Until then - trace wide, filter smart, and fix what actually hurts your users.

Kasper, out!