Declarative Configuration in OTel (Grafana OpenTelemetry Community Call #1)

We’re kicking off a brand-new Grafana ❤️‍🔥 OpenTelemetry Community Call!
Join us as we dive into getting observability into your apps and infrastructure with Grafana, powered by OpenTelemetry. In this session, we’ll dive into Declarative Config — the new way to make OpenTelemetry onboarding simple and powerful. Instead of juggling environment variables or boilerplate in your startup code, declarative config gives you a clean, language-agnostic approach that works across SDKs and unlocks future possibilities like remote configuration.
Join us with Marylia Gutierrez (OTel JavaScript approver & core contributor) to explore:
🔹 What declarative configuration is and why it matters
🔹 Which languages already support it
🔹 How it handles customizations and advanced scenarios
Marylia will also share her perspective on contributing to OpenTelemetry:
✨ Tips for getting started as a contributor
✨ What the contributor experience looks like in practice
✨ Insights on the growing OTel ecosystem and where it’s headed
Don’t miss it — whether you’re adopting OTel or looking to contribute, this session is packed with practical knowledge and community insights.

Marylia is joined by Developer Advocates Liudmila Molkova and Nicole van der Hoeven from Grafana Labs.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Introductions and overview of the community call series
00:02:38 Marilia’s journey into OpenTelemetry
00:05:25 What is declarative configuration and why it matters
00:08:49 Environment variables vs. configuration files
00:14:10 Demo: Declarative config in action with Java
00:20:33 SDK vs. Collector configuration explained
00:27:41 Migrating from environment variables to YAML config
00:31:12 Current language support and compliance matrix
00:36:11 Remote and dynamic configuration discussion
00:47:57 OpenTelemetry GC elections and how to vote

CONTACT MARYLIA:
Site: https://www.marylia.dev/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryliag/

RESOURCES:
Vote for Marylia Gutierrez and Ted Young: https://gra.fan/otelvote
🖊️ The declarative configuration journey: Why it took 5 years to ignore health check endpoints in tracing (blog): https://gra.fan/oteldeclarativeblog

OTel site: https://opentelemetry.io/
OTel org on GitHub: https://github.com/open-telemetry/
🎥 ObsCON 2025 keynote: https://gra.fan/obscon2025