Power Laces started out as an electronics/art project to enter an Instructables.com contest.

It was constructed with tongue planted firmly in cheek- the shoe itself was garish 80ish colors and the electronics were mounted on the outside of the shoe.  It barely functioned and was in no way practical.

I created a short video of the shoe in operation and put it up on Youtube.

Within a few days it had over one million views.  Nobody was more surprised than me- my first youtube video posting and it went viral.  And I didn’t even have to show a cat jumping in a box!

Over the next few weeks there were numerous write ups in blogs, followed by print and even some television mentions.

At this point I was a little embarrassed.  My little project was getting a lot of attention, but it was so poorly constructed and I knew with a little thought I could do better.

And so I began construction on Version 2.0.  This version integrated the components into the shoe itself.  It still wasn’t practical for actual daily use, but seeing and holding it like this I began to see the real potential.

Something like this could actually help people.  So I decided to raise the funding to turn it into an actual product and the Kickstarter Campaign begun.

That 45 days was quite a ride- I did a few radio shows, an Australian breakfast program, and was even invited to New York for a guest spot on ‘Good Morning America’.

In the end, the goal was reached and the Real work has begun as this concept is translated into realiy.