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.

This sort of dismissiveness is the same sort of cluelessness that leads most people to think software should only take a week to code.

Complex things take skill, time, and effort. If it's not your domain it's very likely you are severely underestimating the work involved.

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.

>>The two weekend events presumably only occupied a small fraction of them,

Clearly you have never organized a large event before

I'm the founder and CEO of a national conference/events business, producing a dozen events a year and significant editorial content.

What's being described is way too many people, unless they're all heavily ROI-positive sales people, in which case this problem doesn't exist.

I'm part of a large scale events team (albeit as a programmer). 22 full time staff for two weekend events is pretty insane.

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.