About Me
NEW: I'm running a 2-hour Workshop for Ukraine to help raise money for Ukraine's defense! You can donate whether or not you want to attend.
I am (mostly) retired and eagerly exploring my next chapter! You can follow along in this 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 some 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.
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'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.
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.
My other hobbies include photography, travel, hiking, snowshoeing, crocheting, and classical piano. And, I'm somewhat obsessed with both generative AI and the R programming 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
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
Posit::conf(2026) will be in Houston, Sept. 14-16
- announced now at #Positconf2025
#Positconf2026 #Positconf #RStats (2025-09-18 21:14:09.733) >>
“Formatted spreadsheets are like the fossil fuel of the data community. They’ll be around for awhile” - Luis D. Verde Arregoitia at #Positconf2025 (2025-09-18 19:43:13.44) >>
The {ragnar} #RStats 📦 has a new function to inspect a data store: ragnar_store_atlas() , which visualizes the store, @t_kalinowski tells #Positconf2025 (2025-09-18 16:49:09.837) >>
@luis_in_brief @grimalkina Maybe? Also, the talented senior developers I know who like using AI 1) understand LLM limits and how their human knowledge is still important 2) see how their own deep knowledge of programming makes them better users of genAI 3) see how LLMs are useful for applying their own deep knowledge of 1 language to other programming languages (2025-09-18 16:29:28.595) >>