Finally, I would just like to say that I ABSOLUTELY love the chaos that happens with the Free/Arduino development. Its like a scene from the Smurfs, where the sun is out, the grass is green, and the butterflies lazily fly by when you are first introduced to this cute little blue guy that promises fully web enabled wine racks or blenders that speak to their owners. Then you pull back the curtains just a little bit and theres all this stuff being made, developed, proposed, and so on. Its like going to your first punk show in the 80s and having the biggest WTF moment of your life. Tod had been talking about 'smart leds' for a couple years and then one day out of the blue (to most of us) the happy arduino has a new blinky friend. Yeah its of lot of work and we all have our reasons for doing it but this chaotic development is downright fun if you ask me. Sure there could be more coalescing amongst some of us as we develop new things but I am very happy with this convoluted, prismatic, and even sometimes problematic landscape that has sprouted up around this platform. And that to me is an advantage of the open hardware movement and I applaud the foundation for their work and foresight to allow that to happen as well as the indie makers that in part made things happen anyway.
"Then you pull back the curtains just a little bit and theres all this stuff being made..." This, I believe, is where the topic started in the first place, as a way to say "hey, I've thought of this amazing idea, and hey, it kinda works, but I could use some help". At what level you need help is I guess up to every individual. "I've had a great idea", "this is how it will work", "it sorta works", "it works but I only have one", "I have 300 how can I show them off and sell them", to "I had 300 and then I sold them how can I help someone else now" are all places where people can fall off the development wagon, and I think the original point was to find a way to help connect people at every rung.
i think a great discussion on "bigger things" has been sidetracked by the idea of one particular thing (the i2c ushield etc).