The PAO Post Project: A Postcard Written by a Stranger You Will Never Meet
PAO is launching a new initiative called the PAO Post Project.
You buy a conference-specific postcard for EUR10. An attendee you have never met sits down at the PAO booth and writes a message on it. We stamp it in the host country and mail it, by post, to the address you give us.
That is the whole idea. The rest of this article explains why we are doing it, what you actually get for your EUR10, and exactly how the process works — including the parts that could go wrong.
Why We Are Doing This
PAO is a nonprofit. We run on sponsorship, individual donations, and the work of volunteers. A product people actually want to buy gives us funds that do not depend on asking another company for money. That money goes back into supporting communities — travel grants, conference infrastructure, and the programs that connect one country's Python group to another.
There are four other reasons we like it, and all of them are about what the community gets out of it.
It markets the member communities. Every card we mail is a small advertisement for a host city and its local Python group, sent to someone outside the region. The person who receives a card from Taipei now knows that the Taiwan Python community exists, and can go and find it. That is the same job our other work does, in a much smaller package.
It creates a space for connection at events. The booth becomes a place where attendees sit down, write something, and connect with someone they will never meet. Both sides are from the Python community. Neither chose each other. That is a low-effort way to link two people the community would never otherwise have introduced.
It builds a physical record of the community across events. Each edition is a different card: a different city, a different year, a different design. Someone who received the first edition has a reason to want the next one. The set becomes a small archive of where the community has been — and a reminder that the Python community in Asia is larger than any single event.
It grows as the community grows. More events mean more cards, more messages, more connections, and more funds to put back into the region. The mechanism does not depend on any single community doing anything extra for us. It is a loop: the community shows up, writes the cards, and the proceeds support the next thing the community needs.
What You Get
Three things, and none of them are available in a normal postcard.
- A design made for that specific conference. Not a generic postcard. The card for a given event is made for that event.
- A handwritten message from a stranger in the Python community. Someone who was in the room, at that event, in that city, wrote a message on your card by hand.
- A stamp and a postmark from the host country. The mark on the card is physical proof of where it came from and when.
The stranger is the part that makes this more than a postcard. It is the thing you cannot buy anywhere else.
How It Works
For the buyer
- You pre-order a postcard from an upcoming event.
- You give us a mailing address — yours, or someone else's.
- At the event, an attendee sits down at the PAO booth and writes a message on your card by hand.
- We stamp it with a postmark from the host country and mail it.
For the community at the event
The booth is open during the conference. Attendees can stop by, sit down, and write one or two cards. We do not tell them who will receive it. They write whatever they want — a greeting, a fact about their city, a Python tip, a drawing. They can write their name if they want to. Once all the cards have messages, we match them to addresses at random. The writer never sees who it went to.
Design
Each edition has its own design, made for that specific conference. The default is that PAO commissions a designer to match the conference theme. If the local community wants to design the card instead, we invite them to, agree terms, and credit the designer by name on the card itself. We do not assume any community will do that for free.
What We Do About Your Address
We handle names and addresses, so we treat that as an obligation. Our rules are narrow on purpose.
- We collect only what we need to mail a postcard: recipient name, address, and country. Nothing else.
- The order list stays on PAO's own systems.
- We print labels locally. We do not upload names and addresses into a third-party design tool.
- We state a retention period when you check out, and we delete the list once mailing is done.
- The person who writes your card never sees your name or your address. Not before, not during, not after. Messages are matched to addresses at random, at the end, by someone who handles the mailing list only. This is the part of the design we are proudest of, and it is worth saying out loud.
An Honest Word About Delivery
Postcards get lost in the mail. It happens, and no amount of care on our side removes the risk completely.
So we want to be clear before you buy: you are buying a postcard, not a guaranteed delivery. If you buy a card and it never arrives, please tell us, and be aware that we cannot replace a card that has already been written and posted. We would rather set that expectation now than argue about it later.
Two other things we are honest about:
- If not enough attendees write messages, we cannot fulfil every order. We hold a small number of messages written by volunteers as a backup, and we set an order cap per event so we never promise more cards than attendees will actually write.
- We are starting where we already are. The first editions run at events where PAO already has a booth and a person on site. We are not starting anywhere we are not already.
Where It Starts
The project first runs at PAO community booths in 2026. We'll make announcements through our blog, the community lists and our social media accounts (see more below) when we confirm when and where we'll be present.
Pre-orders for each edition open about one month before the event, and close one to two weeks before. A limited number of cards will also be available at the PAO booth on the day.
More events will be added as PAO's booth presence grows. Each edition is its own card — a different design, a different city, a different postmark.
Full ordering details, including how to pay and where to send your postcard, will be on the purchase page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I choose who writes my card? No. The messages are matched to recipients at random. That is what makes it a message from a stranger, and it is also what keeps your address private from the writer.
Can I choose who receives my card? No. You are buying a card that we mail to a recipient. If you want to send a postcard to a specific person, your local post office will sell you one.
Is the message checked before it is posted? Cards are written in public, at our booth, and volunteers are present. We reserve the right not to post a card carrying anything abusive or unlawful.
Can I buy one if I am not attending the conference? Yes. Pre-orders are open to anyone, anywhere. The message will be written by an attendee at that conference, which is the point.
Do I need to send the card to myself? No. You can send the card to anyone you'd like. You will get a handwritten postcard from a stranger at a conference in Asia, with a foreign postmark on it.
What if I want to support PAO but I do not want a postcard? That is fine and it is faster. You can support PAO through GitHub Sponsors, from one euro upward.
Why You Might Buy One Anyway
PAO exists so that the communities of East and Southeast Asia do not have to rebuild everything from scratch every year. We are a small organization, run by volunteers who are the same people you already see organising conferences and meetups in the region.
This project is a small thing. It raises money, it puts the name of a host community in front of a stranger on the other side of the world, and it creates a small, physical link between two people in the Python community who would otherwise never have met. With AI and digital being shoved into our faces everyday, perhaps a small postcard from a stranger from another part of the world will be something we would want to wait for.
If you are at a conference where PAO has a booth this year, come and find us. Sit down. Write one.
If you are somewhere else, buy one. Someone at a conference in Asia will write it for you.
The PAO Post Project is run by the Python Asia Organization. Orders and payments are handled by our Executive Director, Freilla Mae Espinola. Mailing at each event is handled by the volunteer staffing that booth, with local support from the host community. To keep in touch with what PAO is doing: