About Me
I am (mostly) retired and eagerly exploring my next chapter! I'm blogging about my retirement journey at My Next Chapter blog.
I spent most of my career as a journalist. My final full-time post was a hybrid job combining data analysis with writing -- my official title was director of editorial data & analytics at Foundry (an IDG Inc. company), which publishes tech Web sites including Computerworld, CIO, PCWorld, and Macworld. I was also author and host of InfoWorld's Do More With R series. I still occasionally freelance for Computerworld and InfoWorld.
I've taught workshops for ProPublica, the New England First Amendment Coalition, and at Investigative Reporters and Editors conferences. And, I keynoted the 2020 European R User Meeting.
I received an ASBPE national gold award for impact/investigative online excellence (see story), a 2023 Neal Award for best instructional content, and two ASBPE national golds for best how-to articles (see 2014 and 2017 winners). I was also named the Digital Analytics Association's top practitioner in 2021.
My book, Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism, is available from publisher CRC Press and Amazon (you can see Six chapters free online).
I hold an Extra-class ham radio license and was honored by the Association of Radio Amateurs of Bosnia & Herzegovina "for extraordinary contribution to transmitting humanitarian messages of the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina" during the 1992-95 war.
I'm somewhat obsessed with both generative AI and the R programming language. You can check out some of the Web apps I've coded at https://apps.machlis.com/. My other hobbies include photography, travel, hiking, crocheting, and dabbling with languages (currently Brazilian Portuguese and American Sign Language).
You can follow me on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/smachlis.bsky.social, Mastodon at @smach@masto.machlis.com and my searchable app with my Mastodon posts, and on LinkedIn.
My Recent InfoWorld and Computerworld Articles
In Memoriam: Lucas Mearian, 1962-2025 2025-10-29
How to run an R data visualization chatbot you can talk to 2025-10-16
Chat with data the easy way in R or Python 2025-09-04
Databot: AI-assisted data analysis in R or Python 2025-09-04
How to create your own RAG applications in R 2025-07-17
GenAI tools for R: New tools to make R programming easier 2025-03-25
3 of the best LLM integration tools for R 2025-03-11
Analyze text using natural language with Claude for Google Sheets 2024-12-17
Create searchable Bluesky bookmarks with R 2024-12-09
FAQ: Getting started with Bluesky 2024-12-09
Shiny for Python adds chat component for generative AI chatbots 2024-07-23
Maker of RStudio launches new R and Python IDE 2024-06-24
5 easy ways to run an LLM locally 2024-03-28
How to run R in Visual Studio Code 2024-02-15
Posit lays off R Markdown, knitr creator Yihui Xie 2024-01-05
My Data-Related Mastodon Posts
After days of family, friends & feasts, wouldn't it be fun to attend an R-Ladies meetup about AI and R? 😀
Join me at 10 am ET / 4 pm CET Sunday of US Thanksgiving weekend at an R-Ladies Paris virtual meetup! (Sadly I will not be in Paris….) #RStats #GenAI #RLadies
https://www.meetup.com/rladies-paris/events/312083756/ (2025-11-20 00:41:35.228) >>
My election data-and-reporting retirement project turned out to be surprisingly intense -- and rewarding! I missed having a team like I did when I was working, but I definitely didn't miss the higher stress. My latest #NextChapter post: "Work-Adjacent Projects (Cont.):
https://nextchapter.machlis.com/posts/2025-11-16-work-adjacent-projects-cont/
#Retirement (2025-11-16 13:43:17.984) >>
Want to easily use different LLMs for different tasks while solving a problem with #GenAI? The {mini007} #RStats 📦 by Dr. Mohamed El Fodil Ihaddaden is a CrewAI-like agent orchestration framework for R, built on top of ellmer.
Just saw it at R+AI and looks very cool.
https://github.com/feddelegrand7/mini007 (2025-11-12 18:58:04.571) >>
Interested in using your data skills for public service locally? My 5-minute #PositConf2025 lightning talk aims to give you some ideas for inspiration! Now on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/fSAoCcZD--Y?si=Y2MLNtmjKqJ1yz_1 (2025-11-11 17:19:23.338) >>