Talk is easier than action. And action is more straightforward than reaching a common understanding, agreement and acceptance. I have witnessed in recent years many discussions on what is needed for implementation of in silico solutions. We have developed the technology to manage and share data. We even have a quite good understanding of best practices for building and validating models and we are building many. Nevertheless, the chasm between what is possible and what is understood and accepted and used in decisions still remains broad and deep. When we discuss the principles of bringing computer and data science into science, we often lose ourselves and our audiences in a fog of misunderstanding or even lack of interest and motivation. My resulting emerging perspective is that cultural practice and acceptance of change are the key ingredients to connecting people and data to support decision making. We face a knowledge crossing and challenge requiring a dynamic combination of elements of people, technology, community and collaboration to navigate the chasm we face to reach the new world of in silico acceptance and data-driven judgements based on evidence and uncertainty. I will discuss our experiences and case examples within the brief history of OpenTox’s first decade as we have navigated the journey from a vision of needing semantic interoperability to a current practice of integrating evidence. Whereas I used to explain our goals as a combination of programming interfaces and ontology, and indeed these are important, I now prefer the picture of sharing many diverse dishes on a table accompanied by good conversations and outcomes.

More information online including joining webinar broadcast and discussions at:

http://nas-sites.org/emergingscience/meetings/data-integration/