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I am generally a naive and simple person. I think I would appreciate some investment to make Datasette "more approachable" and user-friendly for laypeople. Dat

I am generally a naive and simple person. I think I would appreciate some investment to make Datasette "more approachable" and user-friendly for laypeople. Datasette's UX and setup seem to be more geared towards data hackers with a hobby in reporting. Personally, I don't see it as a standard toolkit for data reporting or data journalism. Even though you might argue, "What more do you want? It's as simple as it gets", to be honest, Simon has mentioned that their intended users are journalists who may not possess data hacking skills required to get started with Datasette. Datasette is not a BI tool or an OSINT tool. As it is, Datasette is positioned between data enthusiasts and investigative reporters which is a very narrow niche. This severely limits its potential. Simon should consider monetization and, more specifically, hiring individuals who can make Datasette Cloud more accessible. I think he recognizes this as he has created a GUI application which is a step in the right direction.

swyx 3y ago
> As it is, Datasette is positioned between data enthusiasts and investigative reporters which is a very narrow niche. This severely limits its potential. i bet in 2005 if you asked Simon what Django was initially intended to be, he'd say something similarly niche. dot dot dot, it became the backend for Instagram. gotta change hats from evaluating present state to future potential when presented with something new, particularly when the author has a track record.
- simonw 3y ago
  In 2005 Adrian and I though Django was a CMS for newspaper websites! https://simonwillison.net/2010/Aug/24/what-is-the-history/ https://simonwillison.net/2010/Aug/24/what-is-the-history/ Kind of funny that it's nearly 20 years later and I'm working on something else that I initially thought would be for journalists but is clearly useful for way more than that.
simonw 3y ago
That's absolutely part of the plan here: I want to grow Datasette to a size where I can have full-time UX and design people working with me on it. I'm also cautiously optimistic about the role LLMs can play here - hence https://llm.datasette.io/ https://llm.datasette.io/ Journalists are good at words. An interface to their data that plays to their strengths there feels like it could be transformational - provided it doesn't hallucinate at them!
rmnclmnt 3y ago
> Datasette is not a BI tool or an OSINT tool. As it is, Datasette is positioned between data enthusiasts and investigative reporters which is a very narrow niche. This severely limits its potential. FYI, you can already perform some "BI as code" (as I like to call it) using the Datasette Dashboards plugin[1]: specify charts using SQL queries + a visual spec (Vega, Vega-Lite, Maps, Tables, etc.), and assemble a dashboard layout. It is not yet as feature-full compared to Metabase for instance, but several people have been using it for various use-cases successfully. (disclaimer: I'm the author of the Datasette Dashboards plugin) [1]: https://datasette.io/plugins/datasette-dashboards https://datasette.io/plugins/datasette-dashboards

swyx 3y ago

> As it is, Datasette is positioned between data enthusiasts and investigative reporters which is a very narrow niche. This severely limits its potential. i bet in 2005 if you asked Simon what Django was initially intended to be, he'd say something similarly niche. dot dot dot, it became the backend for Instagram. gotta change hats from evaluating present state to future potential when presented with something new, particularly when the author has a track record.

simonw 3y ago
In 2005 Adrian and I though Django was a CMS for newspaper websites! https://simonwillison.net/2010/Aug/24/what-is-the-history/ https://simonwillison.net/2010/Aug/24/what-is-the-history/ Kind of funny that it's nearly 20 years later and I'm working on something else that I initially thought would be for journalists but is clearly useful for way more than that.

simonw 3y ago

That's absolutely part of the plan here: I want to grow Datasette to a size where I can have full-time UX and design people working with me on it. I'm also cautiously optimistic about the role LLMs can play here - hence https://llm.datasette.io/ https://llm.datasette.io/ Journalists are good at words. An interface to their data that plays to their strengths there feels like it could be transformational - provided it doesn't hallucinate at them!

rmnclmnt 3y ago

> Datasette is not a BI tool or an OSINT tool. As it is, Datasette is positioned between data enthusiasts and investigative reporters which is a very narrow niche. This severely limits its potential. FYI, you can already perform some "BI as code" (as I like to call it) using the Datasette Dashboards plugin[1]: specify charts using SQL queries + a visual spec (Vega, Vega-Lite, Maps, Tables, etc.), and assemble a dashboard layout. It is not yet as feature-full compared to Metabase for instance, but several people have been using it for various use-cases successfully. (disclaimer: I'm the author of the Datasette Dashboards plugin) [1]: https://datasette.io/plugins/datasette-dashboards https://datasette.io/plugins/datasette-dashboards