---
title: "Creating a Culture of Observability"
description: "Field notes on systems and sound, by Cory Watson."
canonical: "https://onemogin.com/observability/stripe/culture/monitoring/monitorama/creating-a-culture-of-observability.html"
published: "2016-07-26T09:01:08.000Z"
author: "Cory Watson"
---

July 26, 2016

# Creating a Culture of Observability

* * *

For a change of pace, I’d like to share a video of me talking, rather than writing something for you!

In June of 2016 I was lucky enough to be selected to speak at [Monitorama](http://www.monitorama.com) and I’m proud to post the video here for anyone interested in the work.

[Video: Monitorama PDX 2016 - Creating A Culture of Observability at Stripe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJkXIR_nYGM)

[Monitorama PDX 2016 - Creating A Culture of Observability at Stripe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJkXIR_nYGM) from Monitorama on YouTube.

[Here are the slides if you prefer to flip through them rather than listen to me talk](http://www.slideshare.net/CoryWatson8/building-a-culture-of-observability-at-stripe).

The gist is pretty simple: When I joined Stripe I began a process of adding Observability to the company culture. You may be wondering what *observability* even is! Well, in [control theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_theory), [observability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observability) is a measure for how well internal states of a system can be inferred by knowledge of its external outputs.

In other words, if our sensors — think about metrics, logs and traces — are good, then we can learn about how effectively our systems are working!

My job at Stripe is to make this *fucking awesome*. This talk is all about how my teammates and I approach the problem, what success and failures we’ve had and how you can learn from that!

I hope you enjoy it. Be sure and reach out if you have questions or thoughts!