[arkonaut]

i agree with this ^. if you're going to launch a project that you hope builds the momentum to fund +$100,000 of your capital needs, it might be worth putting aside $5k or so for strategic PR or hiring a PR person for the launch of your own crowdfunded project.

And Lockitron proved with a product people want and getting people to notice it, you can do really well without Kickstarter (+$2,000,000 to date I believe).

[neltnerb]

Thanks for this advice, I will be taking it to heart. I know I'm not good at PR, and think that people will really want to get my product if only I was able to tell them about it. I mean, it's a fully programmable, 10W RGB+white LED light with a built in arduino core, microphone for audio responsive mode, and has extensibility to allow for wifi, DMX, or any other communications you want. Not to mention hallucinatorator mode:

http://youtu.be/Nu21KK0iyFU

which uses the ganzfeld effect to make crazy hallucinations happen.

I don't even care that someone could completely steal my design because it's open hardware and open source; I would happily pay $70 to get one of my own lights!

So then the question is... since I've been working so hard on this that I haven't been working enough real job to have savings to speak of, I wonder if there is a good PR person I could hire that would defer payment until after a project was successful...

Let me know if anyone knows someone who might be interested!