Hello. I am Dann Berg
and this is my website. It hosts all my writing on technology, finance, productivity, entrepreneurship, writing, and more. It also serves as a centralized hub to link together my creative output.
Professionally, I’m part-time US East Community Support for the FinOps Foundation and spending the rest of my time working on a few independent educational FinOps projects (like my upcoming book FinOps for Startups!). Previously, I’ve served in senior FinOps roles at several tech startups, including Senior FinOps Analyst / Team Lead at Datadog and Senior Technical Program Manager for Cloud Costs at FullStory. I was also Director of Community at Vantage, a cloud cost visibility tool in the FinOps space. I live in Brooklyn, New York.
FinOps, for those unfamiliar, is a burgeoning new engineering discipline helping organizations get maximum business value by leveraging the variable spend model of the cloud (learn more at FinOps.org). I’m also active in the wider FinOps community, previously serving as a FinOps Foundation Ambassador, and running an open monthly FinOps Meetup from 2020 to 2023. Now that I’m officially at the FinOps Foundation part time, I’m helping run member-only Community Calls.
In my free time, I’m an slow-but-steady reader and an avid watcher of movies. I also enjoy video games (Binding of Isaac, Balatro, Stardew Valley, Forager) and board games (Terraforming Mars, Codenames, Coup). I also spend a good amount of time writing (in case that wasn’t obvious from this website or my newsletter).
Want to know more about how I work? Check out my tools-of-the-trade on my gear page.
I also have a free monthly newsletter where I share five interesting things I learned or discovered in the past month. You should sign up.
What is this site?
I keep creating new personal websites, but can never seem to take down the old ones. My first ever blog was IAmDann.com, and self-publishing there helped me secure my first tech journalism job. A few of those articles are re-published here, but the website and content is old and I’m mostly keeping it online as a time capsule for myself. Additionally, I created and maintained Novice No Longer several years back when I was freelancing full-time. Some of those articles have been re-published here as well.
I created this specific blog as a way to process my own ideas. Explaining thoughts and concepts to someone else helps me learn and think. You’ll find articles and tutorials on a wide range of topics (whatever I’m thinking about at the time), and I hope you’ll be able to find something useful to you.
It was also a good excuse to teach myself Hugo, the static site generator that powers this website. Take a peek at the source code on Github. Feel free to remix/steal anything you like.
Some of the links (such as those to Amazon) are affiliate links. This means that if you click one of these links and then purchase something from Amazon within the next hour — even if it’s not the item I linked to — a small portion of your sale will go to me. That’s the best way to show your appriciation if you like any of the content here.
In terms of the Shop, I’ve been printing stickers of my face since 2007. I just sort of think it’s funny. I also think it’s funny that there’s now a store that sells stickers of my face. That’s the sum total of it.
If you have any feedback or want to get in contact with me, feel free to shoot me an email at dann [at] dannb [dot] org. Or just shoot me an DM on LinkedIn.
Disclosure: The opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer, or any other party. Usually no one sees them before they’re published.