Simon Willison — SPARQNOW

At-a-Glance

Co-creator of the Django Web framework
Founder of the open-source Datasette project
Co-founder of Lanyrd, acquired by Eventbrite in 2013
Coined the term "prompt injection" in September 2022
Developed the Incutio XML-RPC Library, used in WordPress and Drupal
Serves as a board member of the Python Software Foundation since 2022

Biography

Simon Willison, born in January 1981, is a British programmer and a significant figure in web development and open-source software. He began his professional web development career in 2000 at Gameplay, where he helped create File Monster. While studying at the University of Bath, he developed the Incutio XML-RPC Library, a popular tool for PHP used by WordPress and Drupal. During this period, he also built one of the first implementations of pingback and became an early evangelist for OpenID.