The author of the article is leading the distributed tracing project at New Relic and recognizes that the term "tracing" can refer to different concepts in the industry. The project spans various domains, including data collection, propagation, and display, which are related but distinct. The author attended a workshop where Ben Sigelman presented a framework for understanding these distinctions, highlighting the differences between analyzing transactions, recording transactions, and describing transactions. New Relic is joining the OpenTracing standard to provide better instrumentation support and make it easier for customers to choose their monitoring solution, with the goal of increasing visibility and diagnosing problems quickly. By defining clear terms and problem domains, the industry can reduce confusion and reason better about how different standards solve specific problems and work together.