I went to the maker faire for the first time some 6 years ago when my wife asked me to, it wasn't something I really thought I'd find interesting. When I got there I Realized I was dropped into a community of like minded hackers and builders and art makers. It lead to a real epiphany and I ended up joining a team at Google that ran their Maker Faire presence. Over the subsequent years I built and demo'd some really cool things including a scanning microscope made from a shapeoko, a fully interactive Google Doodle, a demonstration of the North American solar eclipse. I learned a ton of electronics and how to 3d print and laser cut. I went back this year and while Google had a booth, it was scaled down a lot, but still filled with cool projects done by googlers in their spare time.
I was always unimpressed with Intel's high budget spectacle (run by an external marketing firm) and I have to conclude that the indie portions of the maker faire, which aren't particularly cost-effective, are ultimately the most interesting parts. I saw a guy who built a self-solving rubik's cube- servos inside (https://hackaday.com/2018/09/24/self-solving-rubiks-cube/) and met with people who grind their own telescope lenses, etc, etc, and have tons of admiration for their passion and abilities.
With all that said, Make was never particularly well-run and we kind of saw this coming over the years.
The art minded part of it is what is really important to me. Hopefully someone can figure out some way to make that profitable (or at least sustainable) in the future. There is no shortage of tech conferences but I do not see a lot of gatherings where people share and talk about their exploratory projects that are done just because they feel like they would be interesting.
I was always unimpressed with Intel's high budget spectacle (run by an external marketing firm) and I have to conclude that the indie portions of the maker faire, which aren't particularly cost-effective, are ultimately the most interesting parts. I saw a guy who built a self-solving rubik's cube- servos inside (https://hackaday.com/2018/09/24/self-solving-rubiks-cube/) and met with people who grind their own telescope lenses, etc, etc, and have tons of admiration for their passion and abilities.
With all that said, Make was never particularly well-run and we kind of saw this coming over the years.