Yeah. I don’t understand why they can’t just run as a conference company. That seems like the obvious business model. Send the magazine for free to last years attendees, which gives you free advertising for next years conference.
If you have to “dance to the beat of someone’s drum” why not make it the people who are huge fans of the experience you produce?
The impression I took away from that article was they had 22 full-time employees all year round, to produce one weekend in New York; one weekend in San Mateo; a print magazine; and licensing the brand to affiliated events.
The two weekend events presumably only occupied a small fraction of them, except in the immediate ramp-up to the events.
I am the co-founder of an annual weekend even infinitesimally smaller than the NY Maker Faire. It takes our staff a huge amount of work just to pull it off every year. You can’t wing an event - all the parts need to come together like clockwork or you Fyre Festival. You are coordinating all of these vendors, third party participants, venues, etc... which is like herding cats.
22 sounds like a really lean staff to pull off such vast events.
They also published a magazine 6 times a year, many tutorial books (I have acquired a few over the years) and publishing lots of DIY project guides online.
I worked briefly with a team that did 16 events a year nationwide + put out a (print edition) weekly periodical, the team was only about 14. Most of the staff worked on the periodical. 22 seems really high.
If you have to “dance to the beat of someone’s drum” why not make it the people who are huge fans of the experience you produce?