Your Guide to the OpenTelemetry (OTel) Learning Path at .conf25

Splunk’s largest event of the year .conf25 is right around the corner, and the energy is building. Whether you’re coming to sharpen your skills, explore the latest in observability, or simply connect with peers who “get it,” there’s something here for everyone. Out of 250+ sessions, 60+ are dedicated to observability! Dozens dedicated to OpenTelemetry and instrumentation. What a huge opportunity for SREs, platform engineers, developers, and curious ITOps pros looking to cut through the noise, connect systems, and accelerate innovation.

If you’ve already checked out the Top 5 Reasons to Attend .conf25 in Boston, you know why this event is a must. Now it’s time to turn that excitement into a plan.

Whether you’re building from scratch, leveling up an existing stack, or just wanting to see what all the OTEL hype is about, this guide surfaces the sessions you can’t miss. From advanced collector configurations to Kubernetes observability and AI-assisted troubleshooting, it’s all here.

Pro tip: This guide matches the OpenTelemetry (OTel) Learning Path, so your custom agenda link is already aligned and ready to go. Just smash the “Add to schedule” button on that page and you’re off!

What’s a Learning Path?

Learning paths help you enhance your skills and explore sessions tailored to your career. Choose a role or technology focus, follow the curated path to find relevant content and resources, and access the session catalog to plan your perfect schedule.

Explore the OpenTelemetry Learning Path here

Session Recommendations

The session ID and title for each recommendation are linked directly to the session catalog, which includes:

• Full session descriptions
• Learning objectives
• Product references
• Speaker information

Session Levels Simplified

• Novice: Big-picture foundations and simple workflows
• Intermediate: Practical guidance building on prior exposure
• Advanced: Deep dives for experienced pros ready to go under the hood

Keynotes

• KEY2053 – Welcome Keynote: Official .conf25 kickoff with exciting announcements and the latest Splunk news.
• KEY2054 – Product Keynote: The biggest announcements, boldest roadmaps, and brightest trends for .conf25. Explore platform, security, and observability innovations with Splunk leaders.

Interactive Workshop Sessions

Hands-on labs where you bring your own laptop for guided product use cases and demos.

OBS1420 – From 0 to 60: Kubernetes Observability at Full Speed with AI  (Intermediate) 

• Kubernetes is powerful, but without proper monitoring, it’s a black box. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll instrument a live K8s environment with Splunk Observability Cloud agents, detect anomalies, uncover performance issues, and put the AI Assistant in the driver’s seat for faster troubleshooting.
• Why it matters: Learn to combine OTEL instrumentation with AI to turn complex Kubernetes performance mysteries into fast, confident fixes.

OBS1091 – Hands-on with Code Profiling: Blaming the Right Line of Code for Performance Problems the First Time (Intermediate)

• Deploy automatic OpenTelemetry instrumentation, enable Splunk APM’s AlwaysOn Profiling, and pinpoint the exact line of code causing trouble.
• Why it matters: Get from “it’s slow” to “here’s the fix” without wasted cycles chasing the wrong culprit.

OBS1088 – OpenTelemetry Mastery: Advanced Configuration Including Resilience, Routing, and Data Transformation (Advanced)

• Take OTEL from basic setup to advanced configurations — routing traffic, collecting logs, enhancing resilience, and transforming telemetry.
• Why it matters: Fine-tune your telemetry pipelines for exactly the data you need, exactly where you need it.

OBS1069 – Splunk Observability Digital Experience Monitoring: Install and Configure Splunk RUM and Splunk Synthetics (Intermediate)

• Install Splunk RUM and Synthetic Monitoring to proactively detect issues before they hit users.
• Why it matters: Pair OTEL with DEM to get end-to-end visibility from the front-end click to the backend trace.

Splunk University

OBSUNI103A – Full Observability Pipeline with Splunk OpenTelemetry

• Two-day practical training from OTEL basics to advanced collector configuration, Kubernetes telemetry, and APM auto-instrumentation.
• Why it matters: Deep, hands-on immersion into the full OTEL-to-Splunk workflow so you can run it confidently in production.

Technical Sessions

OBS1315 – Build a Self-Serve, Scalable Observability Practice with Splunk (Intermediate)

• Learn how to implement observability-as-code, manage metrics pipelines, and optimize costs with OTEL.
• Why it matters: Self-serve observability at scale means less bottlenecking on central teams and more agility for dev squads.

PLA1693 – Keeping LLM Performance in Check: Monitor, Detect, and Automate (Intermediate)

• Instrument LangChain apps with OTEL, monitor in Splunk Observability Cloud, and automate fixes with SOAR.
• Why it matters: Bring the same observability discipline to AI workloads that you already apply to microservices.

OBS1107 – Observability for Gen AI: Monitoring LLM Applications with OpenTelemetry and Splunk (Intermediate)

• Capture metrics, logs, and traces from Gen AI applications and optimize performance with Splunk
• Why it matters: Understand and tune the behavior of LLM-powered applications in production.

OBS1426 – Seamless Transition: Evolving Your Agent Ecosystem for Splunk AppDynamics and Splunk Observability Cloud (Intermediate)

• Explore agent ecosystem strategies for hybrid and transition states.
• Why it matters: Ensure smooth migrations without losing data or visibility.

OBS2530 – Splunk Observability Best Practices + Amazon EKS Observability Best Practices = Your Peace of Mind (Intermediate)

• Learn to instrument EKS clusters using Splunk and AWS best practices.
• Why it matters: Reduce blind spots in cloud-native environments with proven instrumentation patterns.

Theater Sessions

Theater sessions are concise 20-minute presentations offering rapid insights and proven strategies.

OBS1336 – Deploy Long and Prosper: Observability for CI/CD with Jenkins and Maven (Novice)

• Instrument Jenkins and Maven pipelines with OTEL for end-to-end build and deploy visibility.
• Why it matters: Spot slowdowns and failures in your delivery pipeline before they impact production.

Meet the OpenTelemetry & GDI Dream Team

We pulled out all the stops and brought our A-team. From OpenTelemetry co-founders to the product managers shaping Splunk’s data ingestion experience, these are the people building the tools you use every day. Stop by the OpenTelemetry and GDI booth to say hi or get your deep technical questions answered.

• Aunsh Chaudhari – Senior Product Manager, Splunk
  Product owner for agent management and OpenTelemetry Collector.
• Andrzej Kubik – Principal Product Manager, Splunk
  Leads GDI instrumentation across languages and frameworks.
• Morgan McLean – Senior Director of Product Management, Splunk, and OTEL Project Co-founder
  Oversees GDI at Splunk and sits on the OpenTelemetry Governing Committee.
• Kyle Wang – Product Manager, Splunk
  Focused on third-party and cloud provider integrations.
• Antoine Toulme – Senior Staff Software Engineer, Splunk
  Maintainer of the OTel Collector and creator of the OTel Injector.
• Eyal Maderer – Director, Software Engineering, Splunk
  Leads Splunk Observability GDI engineering.
• Michal Zajac – Senior Manager, Software Engineering, Splunk
  Drives instrumentation across languages and frameworks.

Don’t Miss the Social Scene

.conf25 blends learning with connection. Here’s where to plug into the energy:

• Welcome Reception – Monday, September 8
• Happy Hour – Tuesday, September 9
• Search Party! – Wednesday, September 10
• Weezer Concert at .conf25 – Wednesday, September 10

Find full details here. 

Next Steps

You’ve got the sessions, the learning path, and the social scene. Now it’s time to make it yours. Use this guide to plan your week, make connections, and bring back ideas that will make a real difference for your team.

Here’s your action plan:

• Register for .conf25
• Start with the learning path: Check out the OpenTelemetry Learning Path
• Explore more sessions: .conf25 Session Catalog (here’s a quick link to all of the Observability Sessions)
• Build in some social time: Don’t miss the Welcome Reception, Happy Hour, or the Weezer concert!
• Bring it home: Commit to at least three practical takeaways to share and implement with your team after the event

Have colleagues attending .conf with different roles, or looking for more content to up your observability game? Point your IT Engineering and IT Operations colleagues to their own curated learning paths so they can make the most of their week, too. And if they want to sharpen their OpenTelemetry skills, send them right back here.

See you in Boston for .conf25! 

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