Code Red Newsletter #8

Hi there,

Telemetry is everywhere. And I mean everywhere.

From Minecraft servers to CI pipelines to integration tests, OpenTelemetry is popping up in places you might not expect - and it’s being used in clever, practical, and sometimes surprisingly fun ways.

The conversation around OpenTelemetry has clearly shifted. I’ve seen it firsthand over the past two weeks while attending Kubernetes Community Days in Budapest and Helsinki. We’re past “Should I care about it?” and well into “How can I make it work better for my team?”

Think of it like this: we’ve gone from asking what is OpenTelemetry to analyzing how silly it is when we walk through our systems. (Actual scientists once measured Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks and found they were 6.7x sillier than normal. Besides, a study actually claims that silly walking might be good for your health. This is science, people.)

Also, Minecraft. We’ll get to that.

In Focus: Not the OpenTelemetry you would expect

As technologies mature and adoption spreads, interesting things start to happen.

OpenTelemetry has grown beyond its origins as a backend tracing tool. In this edition, we look at test pipelines, monitoring games, startup lessons, and yes - ways to keep your telemetry lean and meaningful. It’s a tour through some of the most creative and unexpected places OTel has shown up lately.

Purposeful Instrumentation

More telemetry isn’t always better. Juraci Paixão Kröhling makes the case for purposeful instrumentation - gathering the right signals, not all the signals. Think reduced noise, faster debugging, and lower costs. It’s observability with intent, not excess.

If your dashboards feel like a jungle, this is your guide to pruning with purpose. Juraci expands on these ideas - and how they’re shaping the future of observability - in the latest Code RED podcast (see below).

(And yes, we’re very aligned here at Dash0 - this is why Spam filters are the first step in our SIFT methodology.)

Code RED Podcast: Tracing the Future: OpenTelemetry’s Evolution and Startup Lessons with Juraci Paixão Kröhling

From Jaeger to OpenTelemetry to founding OllyGarden, Juraci has been at the heart of observability’s evolution. In this episode, Mirko Novakovic talks with Juraci about what’s next for OTel, why most teams over-instrument, and how startups can help reset the defaults.

A perfect companion to his blog post - same philosophy, more war stories.

Listen to the episode here.

Monitoring a Minecraft server with OpenTelemetry and Prometheus

What started as a fun side project turned into a masterclass in real-world observability. This blog by Michele Mancioppi walks through how to monitor a Minecraft server using OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Dash0 - capturing everything from JVM metrics to player activity (yes, even cake consumption).

It’s a playful, practical reminder that good telemetry scales - whether you’re debugging Kubernetes or keeping your kids’ world from crashing.

Read more here.

OpenTelemetry Traces: A Powerful Alternative to JUnit XML for Integration Tests

JUnit XML reports tell you what failed. OpenTelemetry traces show you why. This guide demonstrates how to use spans as test cases, trace integration test behavior across services, and even convert test results into Prometheus metrics.

Debugging test failures just got a whole lot smarter.

Read more here.

🔭 The Future of OpenTelemetry? A Journey in LEGO and Observability

OpenTelemetry is a lot like a LEGO set - flexible, powerful, and occasionally overwhelming. In this sharp and personal piece, Jonathan Reeve draws clever parallels between OTel adoption and building a LEGO masterpiece. He outlines the tooling gaps, celebrates the Collector, and calls for more opinionated defaults to help teams go from bricks to platforms.

Read more here.

CNCF TAG Reboot: Observability finds a new home

Big changes are underway in the CNCF landscape. The Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) has restructured its technical advisory groups (TAG) to better scale with the ecosystem - and that means a new home for Observability.

The new TAG Operational Resilience will now cover Observability, alongside Reliability, Day 2 Ops, Chaos Engineering, Cost Efficiency, and more. The goal? Tackle the critical challenges of running resilient and efficient cloud native systems.

Even better: nominations are open for TAG co-chairs and technical leads across all new TAGs, including Operational Resilience. If you want to help shape the next era of observability, this is your chance.

Read the full CNCF announcement.

OpenObservability Talks: CNCF Ambassadors Share the Best of KubeCon EU 2025

What stole the spotlight at KubeCon EU this year? I joined fellow CNCF Ambassadors to unpack the trends, themes, and hallway-track buzz - from the rise of AI and the maturity of OTel to the growing influence of platform engineering.

A great recap if you missed the event or just want the inside scoop.

Watch the episode here.

Choice cuts

A few extra helpings of interesting stuff:

OpenTelemetry one step closer to CNCF graduation

The graduation PR is open, and the TOC has begun reviewing due diligence. All signs point to OpenTelemetry becoming an official CNCF Graduate project soon.

Follow the OpenTelemetry graduation pull request here.

The KubeCon NA CFP is nigh upon us!

Submissions for KubeCon are due by Tuesday, May 27 at 11:59pm Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4).

Get your proposals in!

See You in Two Weeks

From silly walks and side projects to startup war stories and tag-level governance, OpenTelemetry continues to surprise - not just with what it can do, but with where it shows up.

Whether you're trimming your signals, tracing your tests, or just watching your server eat too much virtual cake - thanks for being here.

Catch you in two weeks.

Kasper, out!