Hands-on Lab: Getting started with OpenTelemetry

Why we picked it

**BRING YOUR COMPUTERS TO THIS EVENT! And check out the prerequisites below.** Join us for the first hands-on lab session, snacks, and discussion! This time around instead of talks we are going to run a free hands-on lab on how to get started with OpenTelemetry. We'll teach you how to run your own local observability stack and how to capture telemetry from the host all the way to the application layer. **Repository** https://github.com/grafana/grafanacon2026-opentelemetry-instrumentation **Prerequisites** * Git * Docker and Docker Compose — or Podman with the `docker compose` CLI, see [PODMAN.md](https://github.com/grafana/grafanacon2026-opentelemetry-instrumentation/blob/main/PODMAN.md) for setup Pull all Docker images at home before the session to avoid slow WiFi at the event: git clone https://github.com/grafana/grafanacon2026-opentelemetry-instrumentation cd grafanacon2026-opentelemetry-instrumentation docker compose pull docker compose up --build The first build downloads