Mycal Brown, PhDEducator · Author · Practitioner

Accounting · FinOps · AI · Cloud

There’s a story behind every system.

Practical lessons in accounting, cloud costs, and AI—with worked examples you can explore yourself.

Portrait of Mycal Brown

I’m Mycal Brown, an educator and Pluralsight author. I teach accounting, FinOps, AI, and cloud technology through worked examples, visual explanations, and practical questions.

Explore interactive lessonsStart with accounting

A place for curious minds

Understand the idea.
Work through the decision.

ASKEXPLOREEXPLAIN

What would you like to understand?

Five connected subjects. A clear place to begin.

01

Accounting

Read the business story behind the numbers.

02

FinOps

Connect cloud spending to ownership and value.

03

AI

Build useful workflows. Examine the evidence.

04

AWS

Understand why an architecture works.

05 · DEVELOPING

Databricks

Follow the data from source to decision.

Work through one idea.

Two working lessons. Move a slider, watch the result change, then answer one question about why.

Accounting · Interactive example

A profitable sale.
An empty cash drawer.

Move the collection amount and see why earning revenue and collecting cash tell different parts of the story.

Try the accounting example

FinOps · Interactive example

Who owns the shared cloud bill?

Try equal, usage-based, and blended allocation. Explain what each method makes visible.

Try the FinOps example

Learn with me on Pluralsight.

View all courses

Pluralsight · Intermediate · 57 minutes

FinOps for Modern Cloud Organizations

Learn how cloud spending becomes a shared responsibility. Explore cost drivers, accountable ownership, and the tradeoffs behind decisions about business value.

What you’ll be able to do: Explain cloud spend, connect it to owners, and evaluate options using cost and business value.

For cloud practitioners, finance partners, and leaders building a shared understanding of FinOps.

Watch on Pluralsight

Pluralsight · Intermediate · 1 hour 3 minutes

Cloud Cost Allocation and Governance

Work through the challenge of assigning cloud costs to accountable owners. Explore allocation models, metadata standards, and governance when teams and workloads change.

What you’ll be able to do: Choose an allocation approach and explain how ownership stays useful as an organization changes.

For practitioners working on cloud cost ownership, reporting, and governance.

Watch on Pluralsight

Questions I’m writing about.

Explore the writing
AI · Decision rights

The Information–Authority Divide: What AI Can Find and What Humans Must Decide

Examine the boundary between gathering information and exercising authority in AI-enabled work.

FinOps · AI

AI Governance Must Include Cost Governance

Consider cost ownership as part of responsible AI adoption.

AI · Security

Untrusted Content Is Data, Not Authority

Explore why external content needs a clear boundary from the instructions governing an AI system.

Book concept illustration · Title and cover not announced

Books · Planned · Not yet published

The decisions behind cloud spending.

My first book will focus on FinOps: where cost comes from, who owns the decisions, and how spending connects to business value.

This site will be its companion home as the work develops.

Explore the book direction

How I teach

Give the idea somewhere to land.

A story can make a problem memorable. A diagram can reveal a relationship. A worked example gives you something to question, change, and explain.

More about my teaching
  1. Start with a concrete question.
    Find the situation that makes the concept matter.
  2. Make the relationship visible.
    Work through the numbers, system, or decision.
  3. Try it and explain what happened.
    Use feedback to revisit the reasoning.