Ever find yourself scrolling, scrolling, scrolling through someone's blog and you just think, "Wow, this person, they've been at it for a while."
Yeah.
That is exactly how I felt when I was prepping for this deep dive on Simon Willison.
Makes sense.
The developer who's been making waves online for over two decades.
Yeah, and he hasn't just been along for the ride.
He's been building the surfboard, paddling out into new territory, shaping the way we even experience the web today.
It's crazy.
It's wild.
And right now, he's super into this tool, dataset, which is all about making data accessible, especially for journalists.
Yeah, but there's so much more to it.
Oh, that's just scratching the surface.
This is someone who's been involved in projects that everyone listening uses every day.
Starting with Django.
Django.
The web framework powers what?
A huge chunk of the internet at this point.
It's huge.
And it all started almost by accident.
It came from a CMS that he built for a local newspaper back in, get this, his Kansas days.
Okay, wait, Kansas?
Yeah.
See, this is what I love about these deep dives.
Yeah.
You can already tell it's going to be a wild ride.
Absolutely.
We are going all the way back to 2002, dial-up modems, clunky blogs.
Like the wild west of the web.
The wild west.
And Simon's right there in the thick of it.
Oh yeah.
He was wrestling with things like XML, RPC, CSS selectors.
For anyone who wasn't coding back then, those were like the building blocks of how websites talk to each other.
Right.
Like the nuts and bolts.
Absolutely.
Essential.
And then he goes and he makes this little thing called get elements by selector.
Right.
Which you might not recognize the name, but it ends up influencing jQuery, which is like the Beyonce of JavaScript library.
Everywhere.
You can't escape it.
Everywhere.
And it all came from this like little seed of an idea that he had.
And he didn't keep it to himself.
This is where that open source commitment really comes in.
Right.
From the get go.
He's contributing to these projects early on.
Projects that are still active in platforms like WordPress, Drupal.
Which by the way, power like a massive percentage of websites today.
It's incredible.
His philosophy of like sharing that knowledge, building tools that benefit everybody.
It's like a recurring theme throughout his whole career.
Wow.
It's just constant like paying it forward with his expertise.
It's so admirable.
Yeah.
I love that.
And that open source like ethos, it leads to something so cool, which is Django.
Right.
So picture this.
Simon's in Kansas.
Yeah.
Working with this other developer, Adrian Holovetti.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And they're building a CMS for like a local newspaper.
A classic kind of like, you know, early 2000s web dev story.
Right.
You have to build the tools yourself.
Exactly.
And in doing that, they stumble on this idea for a web framework that is flexible, scalable.
Right.
That makes building web apps way easier.
Makes it so much smoother.
Basically creating this toolkit for like other developers to save them countless hours of work.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, Django is like famous for its like batteries included philosophy.
Like it comes with so much stuff out of the box that you would otherwise have to build yourself.
That's huge.
It's massive.
And the fact that it came from this like small town newspaper project- From Kansas.
From Kansas.
Yeah.
And then went on to like power, you know, Instagram, Pinterest, like giants.
It's wild.
It just shows how Simon's always been drawn to these projects with this huge real world impact.
You know, it's not just about like the tech itself.
It's about what you can do with it.
Totally.
Totally.
And that leads us to like his work with The Guardian, The Guardian newspaper.
Right.
Their data blog and open platform.
Yeah.
So this was around the time when like data journalism is like just emerging.
Yeah.
It's like the Wild West part two.
Right.
And he's right there like pushing the boundaries.
Absolutely.
Making data, especially government data, way more accessible to like everyone.
I mean, his work on the MPs expenses, that crowdsourcing project.
Oh, yeah.
That was revolutionary.
Huge, huge impact.
Huge impact because he helped like bring this transparency- Yeah.
To government spending by like making all this data public.
Yeah.
Just like opening it up and saying, "Here, have at it."
You know?
Not only that, he built the tools for people to analyze it.
Exactly.
It's not just about like dumping a bunch of data on people.
It's about giving them the tools to understand it.
To make sense of it.
To make sense of it.
To find the stories in the data.
Yeah.
And it's so cool to see that commitment to open data like woven throughout his entire career.
Oh, absolutely.
It's like a common thread.
It's like a through line, you know?
From those early days to now with Dataset, it's all about taking data and making it like understandable and usable.
Right.
But it's not all serious data dives, right?
Definitely not.
There's a playful side to Simon's work too.
Oh, yeah.
Which I love.
Like wildlife near you.
Come on.
That's just fun.
It's amazing.
Who doesn't want to track llama sightings?
Exactly.
It's like it reminds you that even for someone like at the forefront of technology, it's still about exploring and having fun and like not taking things too seriously.
Yeah.
Like don't be afraid to build something just because it's, you know, interesting or weird or fun.
Yeah, exactly.
Follow that curiosity.
Exactly.
And sometimes those explorations turn into something much bigger.
Right.
For sure.
Like Lantern.
So this is the startup that he co-founded that connects people at conferences.
Like a social network for conferences, basically.
Right.
Which at the time was like a really novel idea.
They even went through Y Combinator, which is like...
The big leagues.
Yeah.
The big leagues.
The Harvard of startup incubators.
Exactly.
And then eventually they got acquired by Eventbrite.
So it's like a whole other chapter in his journey.
Yeah.
It's like going from developer to entrepreneur.
And he doesn't like shy away from sharing all the ups and downs of that on his blog either.
Oh, he's very transparent.
Just great.
Yeah.
You get a real sense of like the challenges, the triumphs, the everything in between.
The nitty gritty.
Yeah.
It's inspiring, especially for like aspiring entrepreneurs to see that even someone like Simon has those struggles along the way.
It's like a masterclass in resilience.
Yeah, for sure.
And adaptability.
Absolutely.
Speaking of which, his response to Hurricane Irma.
Oh yeah.
This is a great story.
Incredible.
So he develops this technique called Git Scraping.
Okay.
Hold on.
Back up.
Git Scraping.
Git Scraping.
So it's like he found a way to turn a version control system, which most people use for code into a tool for disaster response.
Wow.
Like he's constantly finding these innovative solutions to these real world problems.
And that's what I love about his work.
It's amazing.
But what's even more important is that he shares them.
Exactly.
He documents everything.
Oh yeah.
His blog posts are like mini tutorials, often with documentation unit tests, which is amazing.
It's incredible.
Like he's anticipating your questions before you even ask them.
Yeah.
It's like having like a direct line to his brain.
Exactly.
And then there's the weak notes.
Oh yeah.
This incredible habit he's maintained for years, every week.
He shares what he's working on, what he's learned, his challenges.
It's amazing.
It's like a window into the mind of a master craftsman.
It's like he's documenting his journey in public.
Yeah.
It's like open source thinking applied to his entire process.
I love that.
It's so cool.
And you know what it makes me think of?
What's that?
Dataset.
Ah, yes, of course.
Which I feel like is maybe his most ambitious project yet.
I'd say so.
Yeah.
Because remember how we were talking about his passion for open data?
Right.
Making information accessible.
Dataset is like the culmination of that.
Yeah.
It's like he took everything he learned from like years of working with data, trying to make sense of it and poured it into this tool.
It's like magic almost.
It kind of is.
Imagine being able to take like any dataset, even something as simple as like a spreadsheet and turn it into a website, an interactive website where anyone can go in, explore the data, search it, analyze it.
That's amazing.
A whole dataset.
So cool.
And of course- What did you expect?
It's open source.
Had to be.
Because it's not enough for Simon to just solve the problem himself.
Yeah.
He wants everyone to be able to- Exactly.
He wants to give everyone the tools to solve it themselves, to find their own answers in the data.
I love that.
That's powerful stuff.
It's such a powerful ethos, but it's not all like big datasets and global issues.
Oh no.
Definitely not.
He applies this like data-driven thinking to his own life too.
Oh yeah.
For dog sheeps, right?
Yeah.
Dog sheep.
Yep.
His personal data project.
He's using dataset to analyze his own data.
Photos, notes.
I think he was even tracking his dog's walks with it at one point.
What?
Yeah.
Like self-tracking on another level.
That's incredible.
But it speaks to his curiosity.
He's always looking for those connections, those insights, those aha moments that data can reveal.
Right.
And the best part is he shares it all.
He encourages everyone to think differently about their relationship with data.
So after spending all this time really digging into his work, what's the biggest takeaway?
What's the key thing you think people should take away from Simon Willison?
I think for me, it's the power of consistency, curiosity, and just this like relentless desire to share what you learn.
Like Simon's journey, it's a testament to the impact you can have when you approach technology with those values.
It's so true.
He's a builder.
He's a sharer.
He's a constant learner.
And he never stops, which is inspiring in itself.
And his story, and it reminds us that the web is this constantly evolving landscape.
For sure.
Where anyone can contribute and it's never too late to start.
Absolutely.
You don't need permission to build something cool and share it with the world.
Exactly.
So here's something I want everyone listening to to think about.
What's one small act of building or sharing that you can do today?
How can you leave your own mark on this digital world?
Is that a good question?
Because as Simon's journey has shown us, even like a single line of code, a simple blog post, it can like have this ripple effect that shapes the future of the web.
It's true.
You never know who you might inspire.
So go out there, build something awesome, and then tell the world about it.
Couldn't have said it better myself.