OpenTelemetry: Why Context Matters

OpenTelemetry is more than a tracing library — it’s a context propagation framework. And context is what transforms a collection of disconnected signals into a coherent picture of your system.

This talk digs into why context is the key concept in OpenTelemetry that most teams underinvest in: what it is, how it flows across service boundaries, and what you lose when it breaks. With live examples of correlated traces, metrics, and logs showing the difference context makes when you’re diagnosing a production problem at 2am.