AI NEWS PAGE DOSSIER
Simon Willison
Simon Willison's file: Django, startup life, Datasette, two decades of blogging, and an independent programmer documenting the LLM revolution almost day by day.
Willison started blogging while the web was still young, helped create Django, built startups and open-source data tools, then turned his long-running site into one of the most obsessive independent field logs of the generative-AI boom.
HOW THE HELL DID SIMON WILLISON GET HERE?
2002
THE BLOG STARTS BEFORE SOCIAL MEDIA EATS THE WEB
Willison began publishing his personal weblog in 2002, creating the durable independent publishing surface he still uses to document technology.
RECEIPTS: Simon Willisonfirst-party
Jul 17, 2005
DJANGO GOES OPEN SOURCE
Willison and Adrian Holovaty open-sourced Django, the web framework they had developed for newsroom applications.
RECEIPTS: Simon Willisonfirst-party
Sep 8, 2010
HE LAUNCHES A CONFERENCE STARTUP
Willison and Natalie Downe launched Lanyrd, a social conference directory that later became part of Eventbrite.
RECEIPTS: Simon Willisonfirst-party
Nov 2017
DATASETTE TURNS DATABASES INTO PUBLISHABLE OBJECTS
Willison released Datasette, an open-source tool for exploring and publishing structured data on the web.
RECEIPTS: Simon Willisonfirst-party
Jun 12, 2022
TWENTY YEARS OF NOT LETTING THE BLOG DIE
Willison marked two decades of continuous personal publishing, an unusually durable base for the AI chronicle that followed.
RECEIPTS: Simon Willisonfirst-party
Apr 4, 2023
THE BLOGGER BUILDS HIS OWN COMMAND LINE FOR LLMS
Willison released an early version of his LLM command-line tool for interacting with language models and logging experiments locally.
RECEIPTS: Simon Willisonfirst-party