Adriana Villela, a Principal Developer Advocate at Dynatrace and OpenTelemetry (OTel) maintainer, is looking forward to the release of an exciting new certification exam for OTel, set to be announced at Observability Day during KubeCon. This certification will help validate knowledge in one of the cloud-native community’s fastest-growing projects as OpenTelemetry continues to drive observability standards across the industry. OTel is an incubating CNCF project.
Adriana also shared that OpenTelemetry is progressing toward CNCF graduation, a milestone reflecting its maturity and wide adoption. As an OTel End User SIG maintainer, she actively supports OpenTelemetry users, helping them connect and share their experiences to shape future updates. Her passion for the project is driven by its open collaboration across vendors, contributing to a unified standard that serves both developers and observability platforms.
This episode is sponsored by OVHcloud.
Bart
So, who are you? What’s your job title and where do you work?
Adriana
My name is Adriana Vila, and I’m a Principal Developer Advocate at Dynatrace. Dynatrace wears multiple hats, but I got to know it through observability. Besides their observability platform, they work in platform engineering and are active in open source. In fact, Dynatrace originated the CNCF project Keptn.
Bart
We had Andreas Grabner on the program talking about that. Now, what project are you maintaining?
Adriana
I’m one of the maintainers of OpenTelemetry, specifically in the OTel End User SIG. Earlier this year, we transitioned from a working group to a SIG.
Bart
Congratulations. For people unfamiliar with it, what does that mean?
Adriana
The End User SIG brings OpenTelemetry users together. It helps them connect, share stories, and provides feedback from the field to OpenTelemetry maintainers. For example, when the OTel Collector SIG wanted input, we collaborated on a survey to collect feedback and shared the findings in a blog post. We also organized a live panel where end users shared their experiences with the OTel Collector maintainers, which helps shape their roadmap. We’re running a similar survey now with the Communication SIG on OTel documentation, open until November 15.
Bart
How long have you been a maintainer?
Adriana
About six months now.
Bart
What was the process like when you decided to become a maintainer?
Adriana
It was organic. I joined the OTel End User SIG (formerly a working group) when someone left. I became heavily involved, and when we gained SIG status, a few of us core contributors were asked to become maintainers.
Bart
What problems does OTel solve?
Adriana
OpenTelemetry offers a universal framework for code instrumentation to enhance observability. Before OTel, vendors had various approaches. OpenTelemetry unified these, combining efforts from projects like OpenCensus (Google) and OpenTracing (CNCF). It’s been around since 2019.
Bart
What alternatives do users have to OTel, and what makes OpenTelemetry unique?
Adriana
Some users may stick to vendor-specific tools, but OpenTelemetry’s open standard is embraced by major observability vendors. It’s a collaborative ecosystem where vendors don’t compete on instrumentation but on how they render and use the same data to give insights into applications.
Bart
Any big announcements from OTel for KubeCon?
Adriana
Yes, I believe they’re announcing an OTel certification exam during Observability Day. We’re also aiming for CNCF graduation.
Bart
What’s involved in becoming a graduated CNCF project?
Adriana
I’m not directly involved in that area, so I can’t say for certain.
Bart
What’s your favorite part about being a maintainer?
Adriana
The community. I’ve built a vast network in the last three years, more than in my previous 20+ years in tech.
Bart
How can people reach you?
Adriana
I’m on BlueSky (handle: AdrianaMVila) and LinkedIn, where I’m quite active.
Bart
Thanks for joining us today!
Adriana
Thank you!