January 2017 Summaries

GrafanaCon 2016 was a significant event, evolving from its previous iteration as a meetup to a full-fledged two-day conference held at the unique venue of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, attracting over 200 attendees and featuring 30 talks from the Grafana ecosystem and user community. With the presence of 10 sponsors, the conference was marked as a success, fostering community engagement and showcasing diverse applications of Grafana, while also providing an opportunity for attendees to interact with key contributors like Utkarsh Bhatnagar and Mitsuhiro Tanda. The event celebrated the growth of the Grafana community, and videos of the talks are now available on the official Grafana YouTube channel, offering insights into the discussions held. The conference was characterized by its vibrant atmosphere, with participants receiving unique Grafana-themed scarves and enjoying a post-event party, highlighting the collaborative spirit and enthusiasm of the Grafana community.

Grafana v4.1 introduces several enhancements and new features, primarily driven by community contributions. Key updates include the addition of shared tooltips across all graph panels, enabling users to toggle between different tooltip modes, and new integrations for VictorOps and OpsGenie notifications. The release also simplifies Cloudwatch data source configuration by allowing users to set access and secret keys directly on the configuration page, enhancing usability without needing file system access. Support for Elasticsearch 5.x is included, with a note that Elasticsearch 1.x is no longer supported, urging users to upgrade to newer versions. Overall, this release emphasizes improved functionality, user experience, and community involvement in the development process.