#33 DoK Community: Making observability accessible is the fourth pillar // Alex Jones

Abstract of the talk…

Observability systems are typically a collection of tools that cover the three pillars of logs, metrics and tracing. These enable skilled engineers to correlate telemetry insights to perform data-driven diagnostics and rectify degraded services. In this talk, I discuss how over the course of three years, I have worked towards removing the built-in gatekeeping that comes with creating monitoring solutions and enabling them to work for an entire organisation. We shine a light on the overlooked developer community that interact with Observability but does not necessarily hail from SRE disciplines. Engaging with anecdotes from my past and illustrating the inherent bar to success that comes with connecting multiple tools together and the context that requires to achieve results. With years of experience working to improve adoption and create consumer-friendly facades for tools such as Grafana, Prometheus and Jaeger; I draw upon my background within large financial institutions and how building engaging and simplified DX can compel and excite engineers to work with observability.

Bio…

Alex works as both a contributor and end-user of cloud-native technology. He spends his work-time translating tooling, practices and behaviours into generators of strategic value and positive cultural change. His passion is to create positive engineering cultures that enable inclusivity and diversity as a core attribute rather than a vague goal. Enabling engineers to build more reliable services through shared accountability, observability and automation of toil. He has worked at companies such as JPMorgan, American Express, Microsoft, British Sky Broadcasting.