Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
(David Bell) Every day at 2pm, our microservice crashed. Same traffic patterns, same infrastructure, same code - yet the database deadlocked and our SLA burned. Logs showed nothing. Metrics showed capacity. Something we couldn't see was destroying our system.
This is a story about unknown-unknowns: the failures you can't predict because you can't observe them. Join us as we retrace how OpenTelemetry exposed what our existing tools hid, guided by the principles of observability (or "O11y" as we'll affectionately call it).
We'll explore:
- "The three pillars" of observability
- OpenTelemetry Tracing with auto- and manual-instrumentation in Python
- High cardinality, high dimensionality, and intelligent sampling
- Querying and visualising traces to debug production mysteries
Leave knowing exactly where to start instrumenting your own services—and why you should, before 2pm strikes your system.
https://2026.pycon.org.au/schedule/7GHUBT/
python, pycon, australia, programming, conference, technical, developers, panel, sessions, libraries, frameworks, community, sysadmins, students, education, data, science
Videos licensed as CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0
PyCon AU is the national conference for the Python programming community, bringing together professional, student and enthusiast developers, sysadmins and operations folk, students, educators, scientists, statisticians, and many others besides, all with a love for working with Python.
Licensed as CC BY-NC-SA - creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Produced by Next Day Video Australia: https://nextdayvideo.com.au
Thu Aug 27 14:40:00 2026 AEST (UTC+10) at Ballroom 1
(David Bell) Every day at 2pm, our microservice crashed. Same traffic patterns, same infrastructure, same code - yet the database deadlocked and our SLA burned. Logs showed nothing. Metrics showed capacity. Something we couldn't see was destroying our system.
This is a story about unknown-unknowns: the failures you can't predict because you can't observe them. Join us as we retrace how OpenTelemetry exposed what our existing tools hid, guided by the principles of observability (or "O11y" as we'll affectionately call it).
We'll explore:
- "The three pillars" of observability
- OpenTelemetry Tracing with auto- and manual-instrumentation in Python
- High cardinality, high dimensionality, and intelligent sampling
- Querying and visualising traces to debug production mysteries
Leave knowing exactly where to start instrumenting your own services—and why you should, before 2pm strikes your system.
https://2026.pycon.org.au/schedule/7GHUBT/
python, pycon, australia, programming, conference, technical, developers, panel, sessions, libraries, frameworks, community, sysadmins, students, education, data, science
Videos licensed as CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0
PyCon AU is the national conference for the Python programming community, bringing together professional, student and enthusiast developers, sysadmins and operations folk, students, educators, scientists, statisticians, and many others besides, all with a love for working with Python.
Licensed as CC BY-NC-SA - creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Produced by Next Day Video Australia: https://nextdayvideo.com.au
Thu Aug 27 14:40:00 2026 AEST (UTC+10) at Ballroom 1
