Profiling Alpha Release Blog Post

[felixge]

• Finish draft: Google Doc
• blog: [Kubecon] OpenTelemetry Profiles Enter Public Alpha opentelemetry.io#9392
• Profiles Alpha blog post opentelemetry.io#9430

[aalexand]

Yes, ack

[aalexand]

Tracked in open-telemetry/opentelemetry.io#9392 on the opentelemetry.io side.

[felixge]

I reviewed the draft in google docs and left a few tactical edit suggestions to improve the post without making major changes to the structure. As far as I'm concerned, it could be released as-is.

That being said, if we were willing to make bigger edits at this point, I would propose the following changes:

• Reduce the context setting in the beginning to one or two paragraphs max.
• Don't open with "two years ago ..." and get rid of similar snippets. It's not something we want to brag about I think 🙈
• Put a "Try it out" section at the top. It should explicitly mention the required version number, i.e. v0.148.0 for the collector / ebpf collector distribution (which is not yet released). Ideally we could even show which commands to run.
• Focus on "What's new" as a dedicated section, kind of like a high-level changelog. Have sub-sections for "Signal", "Collector", "eBPF Profiler", "Vendor Support" (1)
• Mention the up to 40% reduced wire size from the resource dictionary attr changes.
• Finish with a "What's next section".

I think we can do this while keeping most of the good content, and it would result in a more engaging narrative. I'd be happy to give this a shot over the weekend, but I'm also okay with just tweaking the existing post. LMK what you think @aalexand

(1) Obviously a bit bias in this, but I think we'll get more feedback when people try out sending their data to vendors in addition to using OSS tools like devfiler.

[aalexand]

@felixge Some context setting is I think useful since the OpenTelemetry blog is about many different things and even users familiar with profiling don't follow it day to day so telling a more complete story seems useful. Also, it's mostly the first paragraph in the "Production Profiling for All" section, the rest of that section is primarily the zoom-out for the sections that follow to give a high-level overview of the narrative.

Moving try it out at the top sounds reasonable.

I added the 40% wire size reduction link. I removed the "two years ago" phrasing and shortened that intro.

"What's next" is already the last section?

For the:

Focus on "What's new" as a dedicated section, kind of like a high-level changelog. Have sub-sections for "Signal", "Collector", "eBPF Profiler", "Vendor Support" (1)

part, my worry is that this may make the text look somewhat dry. IMO the blog post genre assumes a bit of a story and with just changelog-like enumeration this can look boring.

But if you want to try applying the changes you think can improve the content, go for it. Some thoughts on the process:

• I'd prefer we make changes to the current doc instead of forking it since we already link the doc in a few places and I don't want people to get confused on the source of truth.
• I want to turn the text into a Markdown PR for opentelemetry.io repo on Monday or Tuesday latest so that the maintainers of that repo have enough time to review it. They mentioned that the pre-KubeCon load is usually high, so my worry is that we delay the process we might not publish the text on time.
• I am flexible on the structure so feel free to make direct edits as you see fit (ask for edit permissions on the doc).

[felixge]

Thanks for the edits. LGTM. I added one more comment about a "two year ago" reference you might have missed.

If I find time on the weekend I'll take a crack at doing some more edits, but feel free to revert them if they're not to your liking on Monday. I don't want to hold up the timeline, and I agree with turning things into a markdown doc on Monday.

[aalexand]

Sounds good. Yes, missed that place, fixing. SGTM wrt the weekend plan.

[aalexand]

@felixge I'm starting to convert the doc into a PR, please stop me ASAP if you still want to make some changes to the text :)

I also proposed you as the publication sponsor in open-telemetry/opentelemetry.io#9392, LMK if you have objections.

[felixge]

No objections. I unfortunately didn't manage to find time on the weekend. Let's go ahead with the post-as is. I just approved open-telemetry/opentelemetry.io#9430

[florianl]

Closing as done, as the blog post is live now: https://opentelemetry.io/blog/2026/profiles-alpha/