Maker Faire halts operations and lays off all staff - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 07:16:21 am
content: Pretty big news:https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/07/make-magazine-maker-media-layoffs/

author: maginnovision
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 07:20:02 am
content: I guess that answers my question about how they afford those things. I know a few people at my robotics club who will be bummed.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 07:24:49 am
content: Always amazing that you can't stay in business with an event that brings in 1.45M people and has 125,000 paying subscribers. But countless unreleated events of the years have gone broke, so I guess it's harder than it seems.Quote

author: maginnovision
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 07:28:49 am
content: Yea but those events are few and far between and they cost a lot of money to put on. The club I go to doesn't go to any of these things for instance without a free table. I suspect a lot of people get free tables or bring things to hand out in lieu of paying for space. Newspapers haven't been doing well so I doubt the magazine side would be rolling in money either.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 07:55:18 am
content: Quote from: maginnovision on June 08, 2019, 07:28:49 amYeah, but the claim is 125,000 paying subscribers, that's a lot.Something like Silicon Chip these days I suspect wouldn't even be cracking 10,000

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 08:11:01 am
content: For them to shut to doors overnight it is clear that they failed to raise more capital from investors at the last minute and had been running on their cash reserves for a long time.Quite common in the start-up field, you generally don't tell the employees you are month away from running out of cash, you keep it secret in the hopes that new investment money can be found at the 11th hour.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 08:48:00 am
content: Was Make doomed to failure by taking $10M in investment capital?Could an event company and magazine for makers ever make a multiplier return for their investors?And that return has to come from operating profits, or from further investors down the road.Inevitable?

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 11:14:52 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on June 08, 2019, 08:48:00 amProbably. It is the downfall of many a small company, who would be ticking along quite nicely if they remained self funded. Too much money, too fast a burn, too many staff/expenses and nothing to show.

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 11:35:19 am
content: QuoteMaybe they could become non-profit and get grants from businesses and governments.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 12:46:00 pm
content: Quote from: soldar on June 08, 2019, 11:35:19 amThat's the ticket.Although the investors might have legal claim over the trademarks.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 10:32:48 pm
content: Maker Faire has some good stuff and a lot of energy, for only 22 staff. It's a bit shocking to see them stumble, they had many big name sponsors. I liked seeing building stuff go mainstream, in my day you were considered a nerd or weird.But their business model and revenue must have needed work or they overspent on marketing or something.The long-term rewards to supporting and encouraging DIY makers, that's what nobody valued. Instead of making, kids will play Fortnite (which is the latest plague) and become potato chip eating hermits.I can't see magazine revenue alone being enough unless supplemented with selling "something", or investors buying in to something tangible, or a tax break.Raspberry Pi Foundationis thriving. Most of their revenue seems to be from the London Stock Exchange, it was £25M of £28.1M revenue in 2017, and they have UK charity status.If governments realize makers are a long term investment, an intangible payback to society - not immediate profit, they should support such a venture like the UK seems to.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2019, 09:25:50 am
content: It seems to be a doomed business model anyway. Makers make things because they don't just want to buy off the shelf stuff. Makers probably aren't that interested in carrying around expensive status symbols either. So that makes is difficult to monetize makers, when companies principal business model is still buying cheap stuff and selling it back at an inflated price. You can get away with that if you have the right "brand image", but now you are into fashions and those are pretty ephemeral.Of course, the lifetime of any tech based company is short, so perhaps the business plan should be to run for 5-10 years then fold up anyway.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2019, 10:01:33 am
content: Yep.It sounds like the giant "maker" marketing and personality cult is slowly dying out and I think that's a good thing.The whole thing stems from trying to build this around something which is objectively about doing things for personal enjoyment or reduced cost because there is no commercial reason to use any of the crud. The objective was to become loud gatekeepers via brand establishment, steal mindshare and add markup to parts and information thus monetising the ideology while pretending to do good for humanity. I'm not writing off everyone here but some of the larger vendors are perps here for sure. Some of the more reputable individuals have managed to get sucked in by the snowball or die which is a bad thing as well.Turns out the personal enjoyment side wasn't that good for a lot of people so they exited early after being mugged (check ebay for entire stacks of arduino crap that is being sold off because the buyer didn't do anything with it). The rest of the people ascended past the trite marketing and discovered Chinese and cheaper stuff did the same thing for 1/10th of the price. Oh and all the traditional hobby vendors who actually sell stuff for a reasonable fee.Example:Real Arduino: £19.73Adafruit Metro 328, a cheap Arduino clone: £19.00Bitsbox Uno R3 clone £7.61 - SOLD!This is the start of the death spiral of commoditisation.Best thing we can do is make information free, remove the gatekeepers and marketoids and remember that the value of the information isn't who sells it to you but the content.Dave's all about content

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2019, 10:29:57 am
content: If anyone is going to try to ressurect it in some form, Supplyframe would be a good candidate, to bolt on to the existing Hackaday empire.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2019, 10:38:41 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on June 09, 2019, 10:01:33 amAre you promoting consumerism, the "buyer" way of life instead of making and building, thinking outside the box and being creative? A life of buying half assed cheap arduino shields out of china?I agree the celebrity show of making is a bit silly but people want attention, fame and glory for what they do nowadays. That seems to be what the maker fairs are, places to show off and boost your ego. An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.I've purchased real Arduino products to support the foundation. The cheap knockoffs have problems, whether a bluepill or Uno and sometimes you want to work on your project and not spend $20 of your time troubleshooting the knockoff missing resistor, bootloader or fuse settings that are incorrect, in front of your children. So extra dollars spent is sometimes is OK.

author: ChunkyPastaSauce
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 09, 2019, 10:40:36 am
content: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2008-01-01%202019-06-09&q=%2Fm%2F07vt0n

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2019, 10:55:02 am
content: Quote from: floobydust on June 09, 2019, 10:38:41 amAbsolutely not. I'm more suggesting that it's not for a lot of people. A big chunk of the people interested in it are dragged in by the marketing and then find it's "problematic" at the best of times. I find solving those problems fun but we have to admit that the 95% of people who aren't engineers of some kind probably aren't going to be interested in being punched in the face 50 times a day and would rather concentrate on the utility of a pre-made device rather than the journey of making one. Recently I bought possibly the largest electronics kit you can get, an Elecraft K2. I put it together; it worked. But everyone I have shown it to met me with "i wouldn't have the patience to do that" and "why didn't you just buy one?". That's the world today.The problem is really the disparity between the "Maker marketing" which advertises a very paint by numbers approach when in fact you're always up to your knees wading in sewage but they don't mention that.I agree on the quality front. You certainly can't walk up to anyone in Aliexpress and buy ten arduinos for $10 and not get a turd. But the whole arduino ecosystem is quite frankly horrible. The IDE sucks (I have found numerous horrible bugs), the inflexibility sucks and the libraries suck. This is why I have dumped anything canned like that and make my own dev boards that work with AVR-gcc and a cheap USBasp programmer.

author: ptricks
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2019, 01:42:26 pm
content: It doesn't surprise me at all.The make magazines I read seemed to be the cliff notes version of how to actually make something and the cost to actually do a lot of the projects often wasn't the cheapest or best way to do them.They reminded me a lot of the 200 in 1 electronics kits in the form of a magazine.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2019, 02:30:35 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on June 09, 2019, 10:29:57 amI wouldn't be surprised if the Supplyframe/Hackaday empire follow the same fate as Make. Several of the people were involved in both enterprises, e.g. Dale Dougherty, Phil Torrone. It's actually a small set of people with ambitions to monetize the "maker movement" and build multi-million $ companies. I'm not surprised to read all the stories about Make sending cease and desists letters to anyone trying to put on an independent "maker" faire.All these companies start the same with a "cool" ideology, but then turn into money-sucking parasites who chase off anyone who might be a threat. Adafruit is a good example. Eventually the penny drops and the "cool" crowd go somewhere else. Goodbye business model!At least Bre Pettis was smart enough to sell out the movement, then literally cash out the stock option.

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2019, 03:18:02 pm
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on June 09, 2019, 02:30:35 pmOh what happened to them?

author: bitwelder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2019, 03:48:03 pm
content: Quote from: Alex Eisenhut on June 09, 2019, 03:18:02 pmYea what? Last I remember Adafruit was at least smart enough to avoid any VC funding.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2019, 04:45:17 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on June 09, 2019, 10:55:02 amWhat I find the worst about the official Arduino IDE is that it doesn't support per project settings, for working on designs that use multiple architectures. I'm trying PlatformIO as a replacement.I do sometimes like to program on a very low level (as I often do with PICs), but reinventing the wheel for something complex like USB or Ethernet is a waste of time.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2019, 04:51:50 pm
content: That's unfortunate. I've been to a few of the Maker Faires and they were really cool, met a few people I still follow and saw some really impressive projects. A lot of silly junk too of course but that's the way anything goes.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 05:20:50 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on June 09, 2019, 10:29:57 amYep, which is why I don't think Dale has a good chance of buying the brand back. The investors will probably want to sell of the assets which is basically only the brand and mailing lists left I'd imagine, there are no more employees.Unless Dale has (or can get) more money than some other interested party, I think it's a no-brainer that SupplyFrame or someone else will snap the rights for a few hundred K

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 05:23:30 am
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on June 09, 2019, 02:30:35 pmWhat do you mean?QuoteYep, he was smart. Stuck out the couple of years, and kept is his down until his options vested.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 06:28:18 am
content: Adafruit and Sparkfun, I think also in the maker industry but revenue is from selling hardware.I find the prices high, they are competing with the clones. Open-source does bite.I wonder if they've hit their peak? Sure there's always new IC's and tech to sell, but it seems largely stuck in the realm of shields, hats, backpacks largely for youths. Take an IC or sensor, stuff it on a tiny pc board, yawn.I don't see them evolving or going to the next level.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 04:01:33 pm
content: I've been to every one of the original (San Mateo) Maker Fairs going back to the first one. Over the years the emphasis has changed from highlighting individuals and small companies and organizations to big "name" companies like Google, Oracle, Microsoft, and others of that ilk. The whole feel of the event changed from an impromptu gathering of hobbyists and makers (I hate that term) showing off their stuff to fellow hobbyists and makers to a glitzy corporate-sponsored event for kids. At some point, the organization running the show decided to raise the price of booths and that effectively ended participation by small companies like Parallax and Sparkfun.One disadvantage of relying on corporate sponsorship from companies like Microsoft and Autodesk is that if they decide to withdraw their sponsorship, you're in deep shit.Perhaps the demise of the Maker Fair is just a natural stage in its evolution. I'm hoping that if it gets reincarnated it will be a smaller show focused more on hobbyists and small organizations rather than a corporate showcase like it's been in recent years.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 04:21:07 pm
content: I think this sort of stuff like this is better in independent hands. Think hamfests. They have no country-wide association anywhere really and aren't "managed" as such by a corporate entity. Sure you get commercial vendors but the point is usually about C2C trade rather than B2C. I think it was mentioned earlier that Make didn't take kindly to independents doing stuff without their cut.Also if I had the option of grabbing 12 foot of coax with rain water for dielectric and a lightning damaged CB that worked last time it was powered up in 1978 for $5 negotiated through a beard containing an LD50 dose of nicotine and half a hot dog - or - a wearable computer with a few flashing LEDs and an e-ink display showing a smiling resistor on it which doesn't do anything other than make you itchy and pour battery acid down your front made by someone a funny hair colour from MIT media lab for $100, I'll take the bearded option please.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 08:53:43 pm
content: You could be right-monetizing creativity is what is really going on, under the guise of bling, fun and teaching kids nothing without dad doing the actual work and constantly spoon feeding "how".It reminds me of the TV show Big Bang Theory, nerds and geeks have always been around making weird stuff. The show cashed in and made a multi-million dollar comedy on intellectuals.Microsoft is useless for makers, they can't even make a small OS or embedded anything. Same with Intel.Autodesk's products for 3D printing are another example of overpriced stuff no maker can afford.I can see why they bailed as sponsors, they only want immediate profit.What else is the revenue from these fairs?P.S. I still have my 1978 CB from that bearded guy. Almost done repairing it. Washed the smoke out of it, new finals. Can prove with pics lol.

author: KL27x
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 08:57:06 pm
content: Was a time Make/Makezine was very inspiring and interesting to me. This lasted for a year or two, where I checked the site regularly for projects/ideas.I have probably looked at the site 3 times in the last ten years. I like to think it's just me growing out of it, but I feel like something changed. I got the impression that it starting turning into Arduino-slash-3D printer world.QuoteThis is what I felt. I got the sense that the Arduino and 3D printer businesses were paying for marketing. And projects using these products were featured, even if they were otherwise uninteresting and lacking in any important details.Oh, I almost forgot about how Make and other DIY sites tried to start a wearable electronics fad, featuring young women, mostly. On the face, this is laughable, but it was worth a shot, I guess. If you can get a piece of a 15 yr old girl fad, you can retire early. This why there continue to be boy bands. Dignity or money?

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 08:58:53 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on June 10, 2019, 08:53:43 pmIf the attendance figure of 1.45 million is correct and the average ticket price is $30, that's $43.5M. I have no idea what the overhead (venue rental, security, etc) costs for these events are, so I don't know if $43.5M is enough to be profitable.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 09:04:59 pm
content: 1.45 million is around the world. Make only ran Bay Area and New York ones themselves. The others (especially in Europe) are more successful.Bay area one had 80K to 120K attendees depending on the year. And I'm pretty sure they were barely breaking even.The problem is that even if the events are somewhat profitable, they only happen once a year. But you need to pay salaries people throughout the year. And apparently printed magazine was not sufficient to sustain that.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 09:22:02 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on June 10, 2019, 06:28:18 amIts like you have no idea of the positive things adafruit/sparkfun have done for the community.- They pay and treat their employees well- Open source designs code, etc. with decent documentation- Publicly discuss manufacturability, product test, business issues, etc.- Sponsor schools/makerspaces with equipment and fundsIf their prices are too high, then the answer is simple, buy from somewhere else (they don't attack competing cloned products AFAIK). But their existence is very much appreciated by many of us.Quote from: floobydust on June 10, 2019, 08:53:43 pmWhich product specifically? Fusion360 is a free software that IMO, competes quite on the level of solidworks, which is a $4000 per seat software.That and a free slicer is really all you need for 3D printing.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 10:56:43 pm
content: I've used libraries from adafruit quite often so I try to buy hardware from them now and then even though I know I can get a cheaper clone from China. I like to support small businesses when I can.

author: ptricks
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2019, 01:31:13 pm
content: Quote from: thm_w on June 10, 2019, 09:22:02 pmAutodesk has changed quite a bit in the last couple of years. It used to be that you had to go through dealers or a school to get access to the software for non-commercial use.Autodesk, not too long after acquiring Maya started to offer student versions of the software. Now almost all their software has student versions that are equal to the professional except restricted to non commercial use. I think they realized that if people used the software to learn on it , like it , then retail sales would increase and it has worked so far.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 01:52:42 am
content: Quote from: floobydust on June 10, 2019, 06:28:18 amThey don't have to, they don't have investors to appease.Not sure about Sparkfun, but Limor and Phil have never taken money from anyone at Adafruit, it's entirely bootstrapped.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 01:53:50 am
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on June 10, 2019, 04:01:33 pmEven Sparkfun couldn't afford a booth?

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 01:57:52 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on June 13, 2019, 01:53:50 amYes, the booths were expensive. Even Atmel shared a booth with Arduino partially for cost reasons.I mean you can afford it, but you would have a hard time justifying it. There is no visible ROI at that price.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 02:00:28 am
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on June 10, 2019, 08:58:53 pmIt sounds like an awful lot of money. I suspect if you can't make that event profitable then you are probably really bad at managing such events...Hmm... If I can get say 1000 people to pay say $50 to rock up to DaveFest (name subject to change), surely that'll buy a decent large seat venue and some fold out table hire...Anyone wanna give a talk?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 02:03:36 am
content: Quote from: ataradov on June 13, 2019, 01:57:52 amYeah, ROI is the thing.The AmpHour sponsored the OSHW Summit one year "just because", and I get a quite a few requests for the EEVblog to sponsor various events and school groups etc, but it's usually like $5k or something and the ROI is practically zero. That's $5k out of my kids mouths.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 02:33:23 am
content: Crazy that a booth costs that much, I would have thought booths would cost next to nothing, I mean the idea is you get people/companies in there to present stuff and that creates a reason for attendees to pay to get in the door. Why would anyone pay for a booth and then donate their time for free?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 02:46:07 am
content: Quote from: james_s on June 13, 2019, 02:33:23 amIf I ran an event like this the tables/booths would be free, you've got to encourage the people with stuff to show to actually show up in order to sell tickets to those who want to come and see stuff. Same for people who gives talks, they get in free.Trade events are usually opposite to this, free to get in, but the stands cost money. I've had a booth at Electronex twice now, but they offered it to me for free in exchange for coverage and promotion of the event (and they had it leftover unsold anyway)

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 02:49:03 am
content: To be honest I never actually gave a thought as to how events like this are organized. I knew that trade show booths cost money since I've worked for companies that had one before, but the maker faire isn't a trade show. I could see having some sort of application/approval process to get a free booth so that you don't have a bunch of people exhibiting junk or pseudoscience nonsense but it shouldn't cost money.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 02:49:55 am
content: Even at that price all the booths were filled (until this year). Some were obviously small companies/groups, so I assume they did get it for free or very cheap. What you pay a lot for is a good location and guaranteed availability.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 03:12:30 am
content: Doesn't make sense with these numbers, how it burned up the cash.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 03:27:43 am
content: Make only ran "Flagship Faires". From the rest they only collected naming rights fees. And you can see the trend for Flagship Faires here very well, and it did not get better in 2018 and 2019 either.So may be they just don't know how to run them properly, or may be the locations are too expensive.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 04:09:48 am
content: We should know if it's a money leak due to corruption, or the faire concept is not viable, or it's simple bad management. The $millions went somewhere...Odd that Microsoft and Autodesk did not sponsor this year.Massimo Banzi's talkwas interesting, it's seems donations are keeping Arduino project going. But they are unpredictable amounts.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 04:46:59 am
content: Quote from: ataradov on June 13, 2019, 03:27:43 amBut after 12 years you'd think you'll have a feel for the costs and then weigh up suitable locations in order to run a profit?Like, you wouldn't deliberately run it in the Bay area if youknewit wasn't going to make money, right?

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 05:09:06 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on June 13, 2019, 04:46:59 amUnless you are doing it for the prestige and visibility. It is obvious that having a Maker Faire in rural Ohio will be way cheaper, but will you get the same crowd?And given the scale of the event, there are not too many locations around the Bay Area to chose from, so that convention center has plenty of power to set the prices.And also, I don't believe actual events were unprofitable, they were breaking even on most of them. It just got too expensive to keep it that way, so sponsors bailed out. I think the non profitable part of the business was the rest of it (magazine, site).The reason other locations are more successful is that they are not that big, so they can be organized in any convention center, which are pretty cheap. But then you would not be able to have fire breathing metal monsters and blacksmiths going on.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 05:11:13 am
content: Seems everyone knew it was coming:https://hackaday.com/2019/05/16/it-is-quite-possible-this-could-be-the-last-bay-area-maker-faire/Quote

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 05:16:29 am
content: They also probably got everyone who would go to such event.I've been to 3 of them after I moved to the Bay Area, but I skipped the last two. It is all the same. Quite literally, there is virtually no difference year to year. Same layout, same exhibits, same people.They just ran out of people waning to see that for Nth time. They should have moved that thing around the country more.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 05:24:28 am
content: Quote from: ataradov on June 13, 2019, 05:09:06 amSo move it just inland to Sacramento or Santa Rosa something, say a 1 hr driving radius.Find someone who owns a giant farm and hold it outdoors. Rebrand it like Woodstock or something.Plenty of options.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 03:58:22 pm
content: The San Mateo Fair is (was) held at the county fairgrounds. I doubt the fees for this venue were very high. The facilities are rather minimal (a few large empty buildings and big open areas that are normally used for parking). It's not like the fair was held at the SJ Convention Center...

author: ptricks
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 01:03:56 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on June 13, 2019, 05:24:28 amThat could be done pretty easily. Venues are easy to come by in the USA , but I think they wanted it to look 'important' so they tried to do it high profile, hotels, etc , and really that isn't what they maker community is about or can afford and that is why I think they ran into issues.example , I live not far from Raleigh, N.C. , the research triangle park is there, home of redhat linux, lots of tech companies, they can get a venue here for less than $1000 a day and have room for thousands of people with hotels within 10 miles.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 10:50:50 am
content: Quote from: ptricks on June 15, 2019, 01:03:56 pmIf the business wasn't profitable why didn't the investors get in a new CEO who knew how to run an events business at a profit?

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 09:52:14 pm
content: Many times the goal is to build up and then sell the company/brand. The focus is on the company's image, you put a lot of money into marketing and hype to attract that big buyer. If you remember, Autodesk purchased Instructables.It's like a form of gambling. It doesn't matter if you are actually losing money and can cover that up in the books. Just need to hold out a bit longer for Mr. Big Corp. to buy us and the founders/owners can then make a lot of money.I think this is the tech business model lately.Another strategy I've seen is to intentionally run the business into the ground. Go to receivership or near it, then the company is heavily discounted so a bargain to buy and reuse the brand name. The CEO mysteriously tags along from the old to new company.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 11:10:41 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on June 16, 2019, 09:52:14 pmit has been done so many time with cell phone companies here, make cell phone company, lots of ads, cheap pricesdoesn't matter that it is losing money because once the subscriber count gets big enough one of the big two will buy the company to get the subscribers, stuff millions in pocket and do the same again next week

author: ChunkyPastaSauce
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 12, 2019, 06:18:45 pm
content: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/10/maker-faire-now-make-community/

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2019, 07:12:26 pm
content: If founder and CEO Dale Dougherty couldn't get it to work, why is he still at the helm?He's introducing a membership model and cutting back to quarterly magazines, and 15/22 staff."For now, Dougherty is financing the revival himself, "with the goal that we can get back up to speed as a business, and start generating revenue and a magazine again. This is where the community support needs to come in because I can’t fund it for very long.""It frustrates the heck out of me thinking that I’m the one backing up Maker Faire when there’s all these billionaires in the valley."I would say the valley is more concerned about mining your private data and selling it:google admits over 1,000 private Google Home recordings were leaked

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2019, 10:17:27 pm
content: DefCon is based on the actual presentations, not just people sitting in a booth hoping to talk to strangers. And presentations are new and show more advanced stuff every year, so there is a natural progression to the next one.Think about it, what happens at DefCon you can actually record and put on YT and that content is interesting and valuable for years and decades.There was nothing like this at the Maker Faries. There were presentations, but it was mostly waffle like "how to be a maker" and other stuff that is not worth recording.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2019, 09:20:31 am
content: Also defcon actually has some industry impact across the entire of IT. Makers, almost zero influence other than people tagging onto the marketingYou can see what a failure the whole idea is looking at the CPC clearance section:https://cpc.farnell.com/education-maker-hobbyist-electronics-bargain?ICID=Bargain-Education-MakerI mean who the hell was going to pay £25 for this crap?https://cpc.farnell.com/jewelbot/858960006026/electronic-codeable-bracelet/dp/ED0036761

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2019, 10:27:37 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 13, 2019, 09:20:31 amThe same people who would buy one of these...https://www.jaycar.com.au/fart-machine-with-3-sounds-and-remote-control/p/GH1088.Jaycar calls themselves an electronics store. More like a novelty store for bogans. I wonder how many self-respecting serious electronics enthusiasts would bother with Jaycar, unless they were desperate. Especially since this debacle...I voted with my feet over this. At least we still have Rockby Electronics and Altronics locally.People are not spending like they did a couple of years ago. Maker Faire (sic) is possibly one such victim as sponsors are dropping off. The electronics distribution industry in Australia is doing it tough as the industry has been contracting significantly over the last 20 years.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 13, 2019, 12:05:12 pm
content: Quote from: 3roomlab on July 12, 2019, 07:56:55 pmI think Defcon are (presumably) doing well because it attracts the top notch of hackers and technical talks.People hold off their announcements of major hacks until Defcon where they present them to much fanfare.Basically you "made it" in the industry if you are accepted to give a talk at Defcon.Also, they have kept it niche and low budget presentation/talk style, so probably much easier to at least stay afloat when you don't try and expand.Makerfaire was a huge budget affair for Joe Public, and once Joe Public stopped coming in every increasing numbers, and a few big sponsors pull out, BAM.