Simon Willison

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. 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]