[presentation to Data Science Dojo meetup on 14 Jan 2015] Years before anyone had uttered the words “data” and “science” together to mean a professional discipline, the NIH was funding the National Centers for Biomedical Computing. For five years, I was attached to one of these centers hosted at U.Michigan where scientists and computational experts were engaged in large projects attempting to explain complex phenomena in human disease by integrating the analysis of data and domain information. Rather than talk about the scientific success of this grand effort, I will discuss lessons from this experience that can guide us as we build our skills as data scientists and help others understand their data.