Imma Valls
Grafana Labs, Staff Developer Advocate
Barcelona, Spain
Actions
Imma is a Staff Developer Advocate at Grafana Labs, passionate about simplifying Observability, OpenTelemetry, and Cloud-Native technologies. In her past life, she worked as a consultant, trainer, and support engineer at @elastic, and was a proud organizer of Software Crafters Barcelona from 2018 to 2025.
She currently focuses on creating accessible technical content and driving the adoption of best practices within the community. She is deeply committed to clean code and the art of automation.
She is also a passionate community builder and ally. As a WomenInAPIs champion, she advocates for underrepresented groups being seen and heard in the public domain. You will find her co-organizing Grafana meetups in Barcelona, Madrid, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Zurich, and Lisboa; Cloud Native Barcelona; DevOpsDays Barcelona, Green Software Barcelona; and TechFems.
She is an aquafitness enthusiast and a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. No surrender!
Links
Badges
Area of Expertise
Topics
Getting started with OpenTelemetry instrumentation: A practical playbook
OpenTelemetry has become an essential open source framework for standardizing telemetry data. In this beginner-friendly hands-on lab, you’ll walk through the journey of instrumenting an application with OpenTelemetry and sending metrics, logs, and traces to the Grafana LGTM stack (Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, and Prometheus for metrics).
You’ll learn common instrumentation approaches, such as adding application-level telemetry using the OpenTelemetry SDK, collecting basic infrastructure metrics with the OpenTelemetry Collector, and implementing cross-service communication with zero-code eBPF instrumentation. You’ll also apply practical customization techniques, such as enriching and sampling spans, tuning metrics, and adding your own signals when auto-instrumentation isn’t enough.
By instrumenting a sample application step by step, you’ll leave this lab with a clear roadmap for choosing the right OpenTelemetry instrumentation approach within your own environment.
By the end of the three hours, you will:
- Have a core understanding of the OpenTelemetry project and its key components
- Select the right level of instrumentation based on various use cases
- Understand how zero-code eBPF instrumentation helps reveal cross-service communication
- Instrument applications using OpenTelemetry SDKs
- Apply end-to-end instrumentation patterns to get started quickly and improve over time
- Send telemetry to the Grafana stack and understand how it’s used
Automating the Toil, Not the Community: AI-Assisted OpenTelemetry Docs Localization
Localization is a powerful, although often overlooked, gateway to open-source contribution. For projects like OpenTelemetry, translating documentation forces you to dive deep into the project, understand the core terminology, and navigate your first pull request.
It is a brilliant way to build confidence, until the friction hits. Managing formatting, context-switching, and OTel glossary alignment can easily turn a single-page translation into a repetitive 4-hour task. The cognitive toil is real, and it can cause localization efforts to stall.
What if we could automate the drag while preserving the human connection?
In this lightning talk, we will explore an AI-powered workflow that abstracts away the mechanical overhead of OpenTelemetry documentation localization while keeping the human in the loop.
And we will close with an open question for the ecosystem: If we lower the friction of contributing through automation, do we dilute the learning experience? Or can we actually make localization efforts sustainable, allowing new contributors to focus on learning about the project rather than fighting the linter?
AI for Allyship and Inclusion: Supporting CNCF Communities with Context-Aware AI
Using GenAI to draft community emails or presentation assets should save organizers time. However, default models often create a manual review loop where we can't miss those nuances.
Standard LLMs frequently fall back on biases: generating meetup images of only white men, missing gender-neutral nuances in non-English languages, or adopting an exclusionary tone that alienates underrepresented groups.
To prevent this constant rework, we need to embed allyship skills and context directly into our AI tools.
This talk explores how to design and build context-aware AI assistants tailored for community operations.
We will look at how to inject the right cultural context, linguistic rules, and guardrails so your AI tools can catch exclusionary language and evaluate event assets for representation bias out of the box.
Attendees will walk away with actionable blueprints to teach their own AI tools these vital allyship skills, shifting the operational burden away from manual human review.
Women's Community Gathering
Join us for the Women’s Community Gathering, a welcoming space for women, non-binary and allies across the cloud native community to connect, share experiences, and learn from one another.
While we may share some experiences, our journeys through technology and open source are shaped by many different identities, backgrounds, cultures, career stages, and circumstances. Through facilitated activities and conversation, we’ll explore these different perspectives, reflect on where we each hold privilege, and practice listening to experiences different from our own.
Together, we’ll turn those reflections into practical conversations about allyship: how we can use our own position and influence to support others and help build a cloud native community where more people can participate, contribute, and thrive.
Full Observability for Kyverno with Observability-as-Code
The adoption of Kyverno solves the challenge of Policy-as-Code. However, a new question emerges for platform engineers: what happens when a slow policy rule adds latency? A slow admission webhook can degrade performance across the k8s cluster.
Tracing the webhook's lifecycle is the fastest way to pinpoint any bottlenecking rule.
The next step in your GitOps journey is to make your monitoring as declarative as your policies. In the live demo, you’ll learn how to monitor Kyverno's operational cycle using Prometheus, Tempo, and Grafana. We'll set SLOs and enable real-time alerts with observability as code, including metrics and alerts for policy failure rates or slow webhooks, and utilizing OpenTelemetry tracing to pinpoint what is causing a delay in the admission process.
If you manage policies as code, don't let silent performance bottlenecks threaten your cluster stability. Join to learn concrete steps needed to close your GitOps loop and achieve operational control over Kyverno.
Metrics, Logs, Traces, and Mayhem: An OpenTelemetry Observability Adventure
This hands-on workshop transforms learning about observability into an engaging adventure!
Step into a text-based game (https://github.com/grafana/adventure) where you'll master essential observability tools—metrics, logs, and traces—and discover how to leverage them effectively for real-world troubleshooting and gaining critical insights into your applications.
Powered by OpenTelemetry (OTel) and the Grafana stack, this session provides a unique, interactive environment to explore the critical components of a robust observability strategy. You'll gain practical experience identifying, understanding, and resolving complex system issues.
Whether you're a developer, operator, or just curious about understanding your system’s health, you'll leave with a solid foundation on how OpenTelemetry and core observability tools can empower you to solve complex problems confidently.
The 50+ First-Timer: My OpenTelemetry Contribution and How Your CNCF Journey Can Also Start Today
Thinking about contributing to a CNCF project? Does it seem daunting, or maybe you feel it's too late to start? You might be surprised to learn that it's more accessible than you think!
In this session, I'll share my journey as a first-time contributor to OpenTelemetry, providing a roadmap from initial interest to a successful contribution. You'll gain tips on finding the right project and those good first-time issues. We'll explore the crucial role of mentorship, especially for individuals from underrepresented groups, and how the supportive OpenTelemetry community can guide you through the process.
I aim to inspire you – whether you're from an underrepresented background or believe your chance to contribute has passed – to take the plunge and discover the rewarding world of open source. You'll leave with actionable insights and the confidence to begin your contribution journey.
Beyond Binaries: Understanding Diversity and Allyship in a Global Workplace
Privilege is not a binary concept—it's multifaceted, contextual, and intersects with various aspects of identity and environment. Each of us holds privilege in some areas while lacking it in others. This talk explores how to recognize and understand these nuances of privilege, especially within today's globally distributed teams. We will examine the role of systemic inequality and cultural bias in the workplace and provide practical strategies for supporting colleagues with less privilege. Through real-world scenarios, we’ll discuss how to foster inclusivity, encourage empathy, and contribute to a more equitable professional environment.
Understanding the Need for Systemic Change in Open Source Through Intersectionality
While open-source communities strive for innovation, achieving genuine diversity and inclusion requires a fundamental understanding of systemic inequalities.
This talk centers on the lived experiences of women navigating open-source spaces. We will reveal the persistent challenges related to safety, lack of representation, and the critical importance of considering intersecting identities. By applying an intersectionality lens, we can gain a clearer understanding of the systemic changes required to dismantle the barriers.
This session will then focus on the power of sponsorship and fostering allyship as key strategies for enacting this change. We will highlight existing initiatives and brainstorm solutions to build a more welcoming and equitable community where everyone feels empowered to contribute.
Join us to explore how understanding the need for systemic change through intersectionality and how actively fostering allyship and sponsorship can pave the way for a truly diverse and inclusive open-source future.
Choose Your Own Adventure to Get Started with Grafana Loki
Curious about Grafana Loki and how it can help you with your logs? Join this talk for an interactive introduction where you can decide which aspects of Loki we explore through live demos. You'll learn the basics of Grafana Loki and how it can provide valuable insights without overwhelming complexity. You'll leave with a practical understanding of its architecture and capabilities and a GitHub repository so you can continue experimenting. Don't miss the opportunity to unleash the power of Grafana Loki and take your skills to the next level!
Rebuilding Your Cloud Native Community: Lessons learned from Stardew Valley
In the wake of COVID-19, many cloud native communities are struggling to regain their former footing.
This talk draws inspiration from Stardew Valley to provide actionable strategies for reviving and revitalizing your cloud native community meetup. Just like restoring a farm, revitalizing a community requires careful planning, dedication, and a touch of gamification.
We'll discuss the strategies that were used for a successful comeback of the Barcelona community such as how to engage older and new organizers, finding captivating topics and events, securing venues and sponsors, attracting speakers, or establishing a regular meetup schedule.
Join me as we transform a community from a neglected patch of land back into a thriving hub of learning and connection!
Cloud Native Denmark 2026 Sessionize Event Upcoming
Dutch Cloud Native Day 2026 Sessionize Event Upcoming
KCD UK Edinburgh 2026 Sessionize Event
Observability Summit Europe 2026 Sessionize Event
CNCF-Hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026 Sessionize Event
DevFest Berlin 2025 Sessionize Event
KCD UK Edinburgh 2025 Sessionize Event
Open Source Summit Europe 2025 Sessionize Event
Dutch Cloud Native Day 2025 Sessionize Event
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2024 Sessionize Event
Imma Valls
Grafana Labs, Staff Developer Advocate
Barcelona, Spain
Links
Actions
Please note that Sessionize is not responsible for the accuracy or validity of the data provided by speakers. If you suspect this profile to be fake or spam, please let us know.
Jump to top