Capacity Exchange: closing one chapter and opening a new one

The Capacity Exchange (CapX) is a platform designed by and for the Wikimedia Movement that allows decentralized capacity building. And a great month in its history is June 2025, because it ends the second year of the project’s second iteration and starts the third, and extra, year of Wikimedia Brasil’s coordination. It also marks the birth of a much-desired integration with Let’s Connect user profiles. You can find more information about both of these milestones below. 

But before, we can proudly say that we end this second year-cycle by delivering everything we have planned. We developed a powerful and well-documented open-source tool, completely aligned with the Wikimedia Movement’s values.

Here you can see the development team at second year’s last meeting.

Two-year mark: data and deliveries

The Capacity Exchange project’s second iteration started in June 2023, through a Movement Strategy Implementation Grant (MSIG). For two years, Wikimedia Brasil would coordinate and administer the creation of a centrally-designed tool to allow decentralized capacity building, with the guidance of an international Advisory Committee. 

On our grant proposal, we planned to deliver “an interactive, online platform, backed by a database, that allows Wikimedians across the globe to publish information about themselves and their affiliates, conduct searches and (directly) connect to each other” by June 2025.

And we did it. 

Many people from all over the world have been working very hard over the last 24 months to craft this dream platform, fully in line with the Wikimedia ecosystem’s principles.

Now, Wikimedians have a stable, accessible, multi-language and powerful tool, aligned with the values and privacy statements of the Wikimedia Movement to find and connect with peers to exchange with. With Capacity Exchange, “people and affiliates can voluntarily offer their skills, their services, and their shareable resources. Those looking for similar resources can then search, find and connect”, exactly as we envisioned it to be.

The software was developed based on community feedback, adheres to best practices for UX/UI design and development, and it’s running on Wikimedia Cloud Services. We centralized all the information about it and have been sharing it with the community via our Meta-Wiki page. In the GIF below, it’s possible to see the platform’s unique design and how easy it is to navigate its features.

In this current version, users can create their own profiles and manage the profiles of their organizations. They can browse the Capacity Directory to familiarize themselves with the capacities, and then go to Explore to find peers to exchange with. Users can save the profiles they have interest in, send direct messages to peers, look for capacity-related events and easily submit Bug Reports. During the development process, all technical decisions were made with the user’s privacy in mind, resulting in the creation of a database that contains minimal saved data, and that is in compliance with GPDR. 

During the past couple of years, we were able to map and contact approximately 200 initiatives, affiliates, and user groups from all over the Wikimedia Movement. Throughout this process, we held a series of workshops and project presentation meetings, and presented the tool at several community events and conferences. Collectively, the Capacity Exchange Community Outreach Facilitators presented the project to over 40 initiatives. Out of these, they engaged with and established working relationships with more than twenty community initiatives, which are now members of the Capacity Exchange Network and Advisory Committee. The Outreach Facilitators also promoted Capacity Exchange at 14 events over the past two years (see here). 

The result is that, in June 2025, Capacity Exchange has approximately 420 user profiles. Its Meta Page has had almost 10 thousand visualizations, and the new promotional video has been accessed almost 3 thousand times on Commons. Thanks to the Wikimedia and the TranslateWiki communities, the CapX tool has been translated into more than 40 languages, either in full or partially. 

And this is just the beginning of our story. The Capacity Exchange is a platform that came to stay and serve the interests of the Wikimedia Movement for a long, long time.

Extra year ahead: integration with Let’s Connect’s profiles

The Let’s Connect program has always been a source of inspiration and a great partner of Capacity Exchange. A lot of good things came out of this relationship, as our Capacity Directory, for example, which was built from their Skills Directory.

For a long time, we wanted this relationship to move into another step. And we finally succeeded in it. From now on, Let’s Connect will use Capacity Exchange’s technical solutions to host their profiles in an interactive, browsable and accessible way. 

This means that the Capacity Exchange platform will incorporate Let’s Connect profiles, and new members will sign up to the initiative through a special form inside the tool, as shown below. Sensitive data required to be part of Let’s Connect Network will be sent and stored on a database only accessed by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

Soon, Let’s Connect previous members will be able to automatically enter their information into Capacity Exchange. The developers are working on a feature that will populate information from LC user’s page on Meta into CapX’s profile. This will make it easier for people who have already created their profile to start their new one on CapX. As soon as everything is settled, we will explain it in detail for the community.

To be able to consolidate this integration with Let’s Connect, and have clarity about the project’s future coordination, the Capacity Exchange project was extended for one more year. Through a grant amendment, the Wikimedia Foundation postponed the end of this project iteration to June 2026, which means it will keep being coordinated by Wikimedia Brasil until then.

During April and May 2025, the team refactored both the Outreach and the Technical Plans to guide the project’s activities during the extra months. The first document contains sensitive information and, therefore, is shared only with the Advisory Committee and development team members. The Technical Plan for the extra year is available on Commons.

Keep exchanging and carry on

As we always assert, this is a work in progress. We are committed to increasingly adapting Capacity Exchange to the Movement’s most diverse needs and use. It’s really important that you use the tool and give us your feedback. You can either leave a report at the tool’s Bug Reports, or email us at capx@wmnobrasil.org.

Additionally, If you want to discuss ideas to meet the demands of your community, organization or initiative, please be bold and reach out. We want CapX’s technical infrastructure to be the solution your community is looking for. Let’s discuss how we can meet your needs.

More info about the Project

As you may know, the Capacity Exchange (CapX) is a platform designed by and for the Wikimedia Movement. 

It is a centrally-designed tool that allows for decentralized capacity building, from the recognition that the knowledge and skills needed for community capacity building are already within our reach, among us. The project directly responds to Recommendation 6 of the Movement Strategy 2030 by providing a service to facilitate matching/connecting people across the Movement for teaching and learning skills, addressing the largest missing item in the movement’s toolbox: peer support. 

This second iteration of Capacity Exchange is coordinated and administered by Wikimedia Brasil, with the guidance of an international Advisory Committee, and is planned to last until June 2026.

You can get more information about CapX’s team and project at our meta page, or by emailing us at capx@wmnobrasil.org.