# We Planned for 10 Ambassadors. We're Welcoming 138. > [!question] Lingering Questions > - How does AAIF operationally support 138 ambassadors on infrastructure and processes built for roughly 10? > [!tip] Article Ideas > - Check aaif.io/ambassadors once profiles go live and note the resulting program structure. > [!link] Cross Reference > - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Open Source Depends on Teaching Labor That Has No Formal Home]] — same "informal teaching labor needs a home" argument; this source is direct evidence for it > - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/DevRel Maturity Is a Five-Stage Progression Not a Binary State]] — a cohort scaled 13x past plan is a concrete stress test of program maturity > [!quote] Vocabulary > - *AAIF* — the Agentic AI / AI alliance foundation running this ambassador program ## Bib capsule - **Source**: AAIF blog post - **URL**: https://aaif.io/blog/we-planned-for-10-ambassadors-were-welcoming-138/ - **Category**: Community/ambassador program announcement ## Author's thesis (Adler Q1+Q2) AAIF planned a small ambassador pilot (~10 people) to formally recognize the informal teaching work already happening around agentic AI, and instead drew over 1,000 applicants — evidence that the demand to teach others how to build with agentic AI, not just to build with it, is much larger than expected, and that a published quality bar handled the scale better than a fixed headcount would have. ## Key arguments (≤3) 1. The applicant pool (1,000+) reveals demand not just to build with agentic AI but to help others do so — a distinct, underserved kind of demand. 2. Open-source teaching labor is currently informal and homeless — blog posts, meetup talks, late-night Discord answers — and the program's stated purpose is to give it a formal home. 3. A published quality bar scaled to the real applicant pool (138) where a fixed headcount (10) would have arbitrarily rejected qualified people. ## Claim atoms ### Demand to help others build with agentic AI is large > [!quote] > "There's a huge demand to not only build with agentic AI, but to help others build with it too." Context: mid-post, AAIF's read of the 1,000+ applicant pool. Reframes a recruiting surprise as a signal about ecosystem-level teaching demand, not just builder demand. ### Open source teaching work lacks a formal home > [!quote] > "They show up in personal blogs, local meetup talks, Discord answers at 11pm." Context: near the end, the program's stated reason for existing. Names invisible/informal labor that sustains open source and frames recognition as the intervention. ## Permanent candidates - **A published quality bar scales with demand where a headcount cap fails** — supported by H1, generalizes to any program design decision under uncertain demand. Promoted below. ## Processing checklist - [ ] Watch how AAIF operationally supports 138 ambassadors built for ~10 - [x] Connect into the relevant MOC — [[3. Resources/MOCs/DevRel MOC]] ## Links - [[3. Resources/MOCs/DevRel MOC]] — ambassador program design and scaling is core DevRel program-management territory - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Commons & Community Governance MOC]] — recognizing informal teaching labor is a commons-governance question about who does unpaid maintenance work - [We Planned for 10 Ambassadors. We're Welcoming 138.](3.%20Resources/Readwise/Articles/We%20Planned%20for%2010%20Ambassadors.%20We’re%20Welcoming%20138..md) — source article and full deep-read notes