About Me
I am (mostly) retired and eagerly exploring my next chapter! I'm blogging about my retirement journey at My Next Chapter blog.
One of the things I'm doing more of with my increased free time? Creating more public service data projects! I presented a 5-minute lightning talk on that topic at the posit::con(2025) data science conference in Atlanta:
Background
I spent most of my career as a journalist. My final full-time post was a hybrid job combining data analysis with writing. 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.
My most recent presentation was for R-Ladies Paris (remotely) on tools and resources for using generative AI with R. Video | Slides | GitHub repo
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://www.machlis.com/apps.php. My other hobbies include photography, travel, hiking, crocheting, and dabbling with languages (currently Brazilian Portuguese and American Sign Language).
Social Media
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
I'm feeling a different winter vibe in this 2nd year of retirement than I did last year! My latest #NextChapter installment:
https://nextchapter.machlis.com/posts/2025-12-14-rethinking-winter-in-retirement/ #Retirement (2025-12-14 13:51:34.996) >>
My {actionsMonitoR} #RStats 📦 finds all existing GitHub Actions across all your repos - plus the most recent time each ran. Just added: a function that lets you kick off a GitHub action from your local system. #GitHub
https://github.com/smach/actionsMonitoR (2025-12-13 20:59:14.914) >>
Going through old R folders on my PC, I found a couple of "Intro to R" presentations from the 2011 NICAR data journalism conference. Before RStudio was generally available. Before dplyr. Pretty different from how most journalists use #RStats today! 😅
From Peter Aldhous #ddj (2025-12-09 01:31:52.588) >>
Can you use AI chatbots to fact-check, even though they can get things wrong? Yes! *If you're not lazy about it.*
This is a GREAT article by an expert in fact-checking and misinformation.
One takeaway: Stop dismissing every LLM error as "hallucination" and you'll get a lot more out of using them. By @mikecaulfield #GenAI
https://mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/its-time-to-take-the-fact-checking (2025-12-07 14:41:19.783) >>