Maker Faire and Make Magazine Have Laid Off All Staff and Paused All Operations

McGruber quotes TechCrunch:

Maker Media Inc ceased operations this week and let go of all of its employees — about 22 employees' founder and CEO Dale Dougherty told TechCrunch. 'I started this 15 years ago and it's always been a struggle as a business to make this work. Print publishing is not a great business for anybody, but it works... barely. Events are hard... there was a drop off in corporate sponsorship.' Microsoft and Autodesk failed to sponsor this year's flagship Bay Area Maker Faire.

But Dougherty is still desperately trying to resuscitate the company in some capacity, if only to keep MAKE:'s online archive running and continue allowing third-party organizers to license the Maker Faire name to throw affiliated events. Rather than bankruptcy, Maker Media is working through an alternative Assignment for Benefit of Creditors process.

'We're trying to keep the servers running' Dougherty tells me. 'I hope to be able to get control of the assets of the company and restart it. We're not necessarily going to do everything we did in the past but I'm committed to keeping the print magazine going and the Maker Faire licensing program.' The fate of those hopes will depend on negotiations with banks and financiers over the next few weeks. For now the sites remain online.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.