Why we are doing this

We built https://streetsafe.supply with a lot of love. But we built it really quickly. Like, in 3 days. (We tried to use RedCap but they negged us.)

The site has served us well for 3 years and 7,500 samples. And we love the domain name. But y’all have asked for more features than we can build with our current setup. (Like being notified when your samples are ready!) Therefore, we are migrating some content to other platforms so we can dedicate https://streetsafe.supply to just individual results.

Did you know https://streetsafe.supply is a squarespace e-commerce site? Each result is technically a $0 product being shown for sale. That is why y’all can’t do geographic searches, filter, etc. Clever in the moment, but also not fully in our control.

We are tired of social media platforms with rules against talking about drugs. And we are tired of making content that drives revenue for the likes of tech billionaires (🖕🏾Elon Musk). We are intrigued by other social media platforms but remain non-committal. Maybe demure. We like this vision of interoperability.

We needed a modern way to communicate with our programs, participants, but also government folks, funders, scientists. We thought “newsletter, but better.” Tried Substack but again content moderation and platforming Nazis was a turnoff. We chose ghost.io because it feels modern, is super flexible, integrates with our data science tools, looks fly, we will (eventually) host it in our own servers, and they have a legit commitment to free expression.

What we are building

We will keep https://streetsafe.supply do not worry!! But will split out functions across different platforms. A huge thanks 💐 to Vital Strategies for funding these upgrades!

1. CMS: Our team’s dedicated software developer, David, is building us out a custom “content management system” so we store and process card data and lab results more efficiently. And securely. This will be the backbone of our internal data initially. Stage Two will be pull from that to directly display into https://streetsafe.supply so results will be easier to get and search. All the capabilities you asked for and more.
2. JSM: We started by having a simple webform to leave a “comment” that acted like a kit request to a shared inbox. It worked well for a long time, but now the request volume is too high and we were missing requests. Jira Service Management allows us to communicate back to programs and get status updates on shipping. It will also host our Community Education materials, which we will be unveiling this Fall. This includes a searchable knowledge base geared towards harm reduction programs.
3. ghost.io: In 2021 when we started, we needed to convince people about drug checking. Now we are ready to change tone and show the benefits. And we also get a lot of questions from folks that we would like to answer with data and links. So the explanatory content from https://streetsafe.supply will migrate here, with the more hands-on technical content for programs we serve over to JSM.
4. Deepnote: We have fallen hard in love with this cloud-based Jupyter notebook. This is Python (and R)-based platform let’s us publish our Live Reports. It’s AI-enabled data science bliss. It will also host our new Program Summary reports launching this Fall, where programs can get a daily updated report of their samples.
5. OpioidData.org: The original! We keep this for our broader collection of studies with University of Kentucky. It needs a refresh, but as we edge further away from research and towards direct service, we’ll see how it adapts. We do like being able to point to all the other work we are involved in that addresses the many many many things drug checking cannot.

In conclusion…

We value communication when it is clear and honest. We believe these tools will help us serve the people we love better. And at the same time keep us accountable to our community. Thanks for your patience as we kick around new ideas and TOGETHER WE CREATE.