Daniel Palay is the head of Customer & Community Marketing at Grafana Labs, the company behind Grafana, the world's leading open-source technology for dashboards and visualization. Since joining Grafana Labs in 2021, Daniel has increased advocacy-driven content across the company by 3x and fostered valuable customer connections that have resulted in more than $5 million in closed deals. As the team lead, he has also increased the company's engagement with Grafana's growing open-source community across social media channels as well as through meetups, online forums, and virtual conferences. Prior to Grafana Labs, Daniel spent 7 years at Elastic where he grew and operationalized the Customer Advocacy function, building a vast library of guest blogs, conference talks, video testimonials, and regulatory references. (S1's and earnings calls are fun, aren't they?) Daniel started his career in politics, first working with the 2008 Obama campaign before becoming a political and public affairs consultant. He then worked in communications and digital marketing in the non-profit sector before jumping into tech marketing. Outside of work, you can find Daniel in San Jose, playing ice hockey or starting (and quickly screwing up) any number of home improvement projects. Beyond that, he spends time enjoying life — be it at a winery, traveling, or watching Schitt's Creek, Ted Lasso, or live sporting events (go Sharks!) — with his wife, Jenny, and their 10-year-old cat, Little Man.