IDENTIFYING THE CORE LEADERSHIP TEAM
Maker Faire requires a leader and a leadership team who will work to make the event successful. A leader is essential. A leader must be devoted to the vision of the event and willing to organize others to bring it off. However, a leader can’t do it alone. A leader must have other people who can be counted on. A committed, core group of folks as part of a leadership team is also required.
NOTE: If after the first month of circulating the idea, you don’t have at least two other leadership team members, seriously consider the workload ahead and make sure the scale of your event matches your availability and expertise. We suggest you postpone your event without this extra support.
Organizing a Maker Faire Committee (Intro to Roles and Functions)
Once partnerships have been clarified it’s time to evaluate which active members of the team have already volunteered, and find out what roles those originators see themselves “owning” as the larger committee takes shape.
Typical committee or team leadership roles (and their domains) are:
Of course, in the case of smaller Mini Maker Faires with small leadership teams, individuals are likely to take on one or more of these roles. It’s good to think about them separately, however, as you will undoubtedly want to plan for growth and greater participation from partners in years to come.
Example of Core Team Roles
Shared Roles: Obviously every Leadership Team is going to be different. Our Leadership Team was already close-knit; we were friends, were pretty fluent with Internet technologies and comfortable with digital collaboration, and thus shared many of the primary responsibilities, especially:
But we also had identifiable strengths, as well as different levels of availability. (For example, Leader 1 was able to devote three full-time months to the production of our Mini Maker Fair.) We broke down our tasks like this:
Leader 1’s Primary Roles:
Leader 2’s Primary Roles:
Leader 3’s Primary Roles:
Leader 4’s Primary Roles — Employee of Benefiting Organization (School):
Next year we hope for another leadership ream member whose primary focus will be sponsorship. Since our event is a charitable fundraiser, sponsorship is key to making the event raise more funds.
And of course, as we got closer to the event we involved many more people (see Mobilizing a Volunteer Team for roles that came alive the week-of and day-of event.)
Getting Everyone Together
Depending how tight your production schedule is, you might want to plan your first get-together to be social and fun. Bringing in a speaker or a panel of makers, hosting the gathering in a makerspace, and having a potluck are all good ways to break the ice, get everyone knowing everyone’s names, and generate excitement about the amazing event you’re about to bring forth.
Once you’ve been social—either as an intro to a more focused meeting, or at an earlier date—you will want to begin getting everyone oriented and on the same page. Have a big white board or giant sticky note tablets or big sheets of paper available to take notes.
Here’s a sample agenda to help you imagine that first partnership meeting:
“Getting everyone together” is a constant opportunity throughout the Mini Maker Faire process. Making a party of chores is what keeps volunteers coming back! Here are some more gathering moments to look for and create throughout the event process:
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Every Mini Maker Faire will have its own leadership team composition, timeline, budget, etc. Breaking down your task lists by area and time are a good way of managing yourself and your team so that you get to “showtime” on time, and in a good mood.
Task Lists by Time
Tracking your tasks by due-date is a great way to gauge your progress and keep on track. This timeline below is culled from the second East Bay Mini Maker Faire, a fairly large Mini Maker Faire (75+ Makers, +/-4K attendees).
Task List by Production Area
Organizing your list of jobs by Job or Production Area is another way of dividing and conquering. To some extent, this is like a thorough job description. You can even incorporate the ‘weeks-out” nature of the above Tasks List by Time and then really provide your team leaders with a clear understanding of what is needed when.
HINT: Having your team leaders modify and update this timeline and task lists as you go will help immensely in years to come.
General Team Communications (Meetings, Tools, Asset Management)
Your communication habits and tools will depend on the closeness of your relationships to Team Members.
Email. We set up an info@ebmakerfaire.com email address that all core members would receive. This was our shortcut for communicating with each other, and also our way of all knowing what inquiries were being generated from the website. You may also set up individual theirnamehere@XXXminimakerfaire.com addresses (aliases) for each leadership team member to use.
HINT: Take a poll of your team members to make sure that they are email-friendly. If some are not committed to checking email at least daily (more frequently for leadership team members), figure out an alternate communication method, or come up with an independent job description that doesn’t require that level of contact.
Data Management Tools. Google Docs is free and does not require much know-how. People can work on the same document in real-time, which is a huge advantage. Spreadsheets can host the data you are tracking. Documents like draft press releases and draft blog posts can be shared and edited (with complete version history available)
Timeline Management. We used a sheet in our Google Docs “Mini Maker Faire Headquarters” spreadsheet, but I can imagine other people using a shared Google Calendar to organize for deadlines and for meeting reminders.
Meetings. If your team is tight and composed of self-starters, you can really minimize the meetings you hold. Meetings are good for building community, socializing new team members, boosting morale, and for launching milestones. Too many meetings are burdensome for busy and self-directed volunteers; sometimes there is a finite amount of time available and a meeting might take up precious time otherwise spent on getting something actually accomplished.
However, if your team is comprised of alliances from co-sponsoring organizations and aren’t likely to be as in-sync, a regular calendar of meetings is needed. Make a conference call number available (Google “free conference call hosting”) so that your members can tune into the discussion even when they are too busy to get across town.
Try to run meetings with a real emphasis on:
Share the meeting summary and action items with the group as soon as possible. The “Executive Producer” should track the action items and touch base with those folks assigned with tasks. Completed tasks get noted; uncompleted roll into the next meeting agenda.