Simon Willison builds tools to explore and publish data. As the creator of Datasette and co-creator of the Django Web Framework, his approach is rooted in his background as a data journalist at The Guardian and a Stanford journalism fellow.
He also closely tracks the chaos of artificial intelligence. His talk on 2026 in LLMs breaks down the year’s biggest AI shifts—from export controls to open weight models—helping developers navigate a fast-moving landscape.
Previously, Simon co-founded Lanyrd, and he has been steadily blogging about web development since 2002.