What 30 Days of OpenTelemetry Taught Me

Cloud Native Los Angeles welcomes Julia Morgado as she discusses how OpenTelemetry adoption often fails at the starting line. Not because it is too complex, but because the way in is unclear. Too many concepts appear at once, and the ecosystem assumes prior context. For many people, this makes it feel intimidating before it ever becomes useful.
This talk comes from spending 30 days learning OpenTelemetry hands-on and sharing the process in public. Along the way, the same questions and confusion kept coming back. It became clear where people feel overwhelmed, lose confidence, or decide to stop.
What emerged is a clear learning path for getting started. It focuses on the first steps that build understanding, shares what worked from real experience, and lowers the pressure to understand everything at once. The aim is to help more people learn OpenTelemetry and adopt it in practice.