Simon Willison
| Simon Willison | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) Simon Willison (2929211382) (cropped).jpg Willison in 2008 | |
| Born | January 1981 (age 45) United Kingdom |
| 🏫 Education | University of Bath (B.Sc. Computer Science, 2005) |
| 💼 Occupation | web developer, entrepreneur |
| Known for | Django Web framework, Lanyrd |
| 🌐 Website | simonwillison |
Simon Willison (born January 1981) is a British programmer, co-founder of the social conference directory Lanyrd, and co-creator of the Django Web framework.
Career
In 2003–2004, he and other web developers (Adrian Holovaty, Jacob Kaplan-Moss and Wilson Miner[1]) created Django, an open source web application framework for Python.
After graduating in 2005, Willison worked on Yahoo's Technology Development team and on very early versions of the Fire Eagle Internet geolocation service. After Yahoo! he worked as a consultant on OpenID and web development in various publishing and media companies. Willison was hired in 2008 by the UK newspaper The Guardian to work as a software architect.[2]
In late 2010, he launched the social conference directory Lanyrd with his wife and co-founder, Natalie Downe.[3] They received funding from Y Combinator in early 2011.[4] In 2013, Lanyrd was acquired by Eventbrite[5] with Simon and Natalie joining the Eventbrite engineering team in San Francisco.
Willison has been a board member of the Python Software Foundation since 2022. As of 2025, he intends to continue serving for another three-year term.[6]
In June 2025, Willison coined the term "lethal trifecta" to describe AI agents that combine three risky capabilities: access to private data, exposure to untrusted content, and the ability to communicate externally.[7]
In February 2026, following the discontinuation of The World Factbook by the CIA, Willison managed to retrieve and download the last ZIP file archive of the website, released in 2020, before extracting it into a freely accessible GitHub repository.[8][9]
References
- ↑ "Django committers". djangoproject.com. Archived from the original on July 16, 2014. Retrieved January 1, 2022. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Simon Willison joins Guardian News & Media". guardian.co.uk. 2008-08-22. Retrieved 2011-02-12.
Former Yahoo and Lawrence Journal World developer Simon Willison has been recruited by Guardian News & Media as a software architect, it was announced today.
- ↑ "Lanyrd FAQ page". Retrieved 2011-03-22.
- ↑ "Lanyrd announces YC funding". Retrieved 2011-03-22.
- ↑ "Eventbrite acquires Lanyrd and Eventioz to speed up its global expansion and aid event discovery". 3 September 2013. Retrieved 2014-01-29.
- ↑ "Nominee for 2025 Python Software Foundation Board Election". python.org. Retrieved 2025-08-10.
- ↑ "Why AI systems may never be secure, and what to do about it". The Economist. 22 September 2025. Retrieved 8 April 2026.
- ↑ Kaur, Harmeet (5 February 2026). "CIA terminates its World Factbook". CNN. Retrieved 10 February 2026.
- ↑ Willison, Simon (5 February 2026). "Spotlighting The World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell". simonwillison.net. Retrieved 10 February 2026.
External links
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