Python Asia Organization Update: Year 1 & Request for Support

[Iqbal Abdullah]

Hello folks!

It's October and a time to start new things in some parts of our world.

It's also around a year since we started the Python Asia Organization (PAO) so I wanted to send a quick update on what we have done and also reiterate a request for support from the community.

What We Have Done So Far..

For the past one year since inception, this is what what PAO has done:

• Launched our website
• Launched our Community Subdomains Program, to reduce domain burden and share our brand with communities within the region
• Our friends in Python Bangladesh is currently utilizing this
• Launched our Pretalx instance for community members to use
• Maintaining our Mastodon instance for the community
• Held our first online Charity Talk for H1 2025
• The Online Charity Talk series focuses on our regional community as speakers and provides a platform for them to contribute their knowledge back to the community.
• We're planning the second part of the online Charity Talks H2 2025 which will happen in January 2026.
• Launched the Promotions Workgroup (WG), to help promote the people and the events within our community. 
• With the help of our friends from PythonPH, started working on building our next regional conference PythonAsia 2026 to be held in Manila.
• We were also actively involved in PyCons around the region and beyond. Some of the conferences PAO was/will be involved in were/are in 2025:
• PyCon APAC 2025 (Feb) 
• PyCon US 2025 (May)
• EuroPython 2025 (Jul)
• PyCon KR 2025 (Aug)
• PyCon SG 2025 (Jun)
• PyCon HK 2025 (Oct)
• PyCon TH 2025 (Oct)
• PyCon JP 2025 (Oct)
• We had an Open Space session with the community, with a lot of time spent talking about money. 💰
• The PAO team got together during the sprint day and worked on our TODOs.

Request For Support

PAO currently receives about EUR115/month from recurring GitHub sponsors—thank you!

Our members have personally contributed around EUR4000 to launch and keep the association afloat. Our inaugural Online Charity Talk raised around EUR270 from tickets. We also received ~EUR6400 in sponsorships this year from our sponsors, plus a few hundred euros in community ad-hoc donations at the events we participated in.

Most funds go to:

• Most: A modest salary for our Executive Director (creating documents, doing operations, sponsor outreach, site design...basically keeping things moving and everything together)
• Some: Travel to support regional work
• A little: Infrastructure and organizational upkeep

There are a few things we need you help with:

1. Help us reach sustainability: To be sustainable and keep our infrastructure up, our target is to get to EUR250 a month of recurring sponsors (EUR180 for our accounting and audit firm, EUR50 for our server hosting our website/Pretalx and another EUR20 for our Mastodon instance). This means we need around another 15 people to help us at EUR10 per month. We are accepting recurring donations from our GitHub Sponsors page.
2. Sponsor PythonAsia 2026 (March 2026): Be a sponsor for our next regional conference in March 2026! Space is limited and if it is like anything like the last conference, all sponsorship packages were sold out. Contact us at spo...@pythonasia.org for more details.
3. Be our annual sponsor! If you or your company is looking to make the biggest impact but at the same time get the best return from your sponsorship, being our annual sponsor would be the best way to do that. If you're interested, contact us at spo...@pythonasia.org for more details.
4. Sponsor our next online Charity Talks H2 (Jan 2026): If you or your company might not be ready for a commitment like being an annual sponsor, a simple but still effective way to show your appreciation for the community is to sponsor our online Charity Talks and support opportunities for new speakers to shine. Contact us at spo...@pythonasia.org for more details.
5. Volunteer with a Workgroup: We're looking for friends to help volunteer for workgroups! Right now we're looking for people to join the workgroups below. Just reply to this email if you're interested:
1. Promotions WG, to help promote our events, people and community within the region and beyond
2. CoC WG, to help with education and implementation of our CoC across our communities
3. Programs WG, to help review and guide talk proposals while elevating the burden of organizers
6. Finally, spread the word! Share this message with your local Python groups and friends.

Thank you for being part of this journey. Together, we’re building a stronger Python community across East & Southeast Asia. 💙

- Iqbal Abdullah
On behalf of the Python Asia Organization (PAO)