I totally agree with the id10tothe9 observations. What now seems to be important in "cryptoworld", going on in the area of blockchain applications (e.g. Ripple, Ethereum etc). These works very soon will lead to a new framework for crypto economy (I am afraid, the "cryptonetworks" will become also a gateway for banks and corporations to preserve their dominant role in a new financial market but this is beyond the scope of the discussion). Therefore, the question arises of the future of cryptocurrency. As id10tothe9 wrote, customers are not interested in what currency (cryptocurrency) is in use but rather how much they possess, what they can buy for it, and how a payment system is simple in everyday use  - customers are lazy and waits for the best market offer. Unfortunatelly, no dev team, no single crypto community have the power and resources to "change the word". Most of people will use TIPs (or any other crypto) if the prices in TIPs are lower then in flat - can we achieve this ? - I doubt. Most of people wiil use crypto credit card, live wallets or any smartfon application if they do not need first to care of exchange among many cryptos and crypto-flat, care of security etc. - can we achieve this ? - once again I doubt (maybe Ripple or its competitors will resolve that, maybe something like ANX debit card will be worldwide solution).
On the other hand, blockchain technology offers a lot more features then any flat but these features must have a direct result of the characteristics of the supported services. Let's look at what is happening now. Currently most of developments manifest themself as a race in the area of value (coin) transaction feature, mostly anonymous based. But question is ..... where is the ecosystem for these transactions, what for I need all new black/dark/veri-coins features if there is no REAL cryptoeconomy around them. Should I be afraid when purchasing graphics card, pay a taxi driver,  tip a waiter etc.  and therefore expect fully anonymous transactions ? OK, privacy can be useful in a number of services but not all. First, one shoud define the service (ecosystem) and then, the blockchain (coin, system) feature supporting that service. My feeling is that everything is now ... upside down ;-)
What does this mean for TIPs and our community ? We should concentrate on the sentence, which Id10tothe9 wrote "So I'm thinking we need to define the goals and markets we want to target." That is the point ! We shall ask - when and what for people will need TIPs, what service can use TIPs as a "bloodstream" and the last, fundamental question - whether such a service can bring potentially gain for devs and investors.
If we find such a niche (such a service) than devs (e.g icanprogram and others) help to create a service system, investors (people who invest their TIPs) deliver the "blood" for the functioning of a system. All of involved persons will have shares, everyone will have a share in the eventual failure or success of the project ;-). The devs receive shares (interest) due to their know-how contribution, investors due to their finansial contribution (in TIPs). IMO, it is some new aproach in the "cryptoworld" - devs will have profits ( i think, it is consistent with the icanprogram point of view ), coin holders will have a choice among holding (stacking), speculation and INVESTMENT.
Profits from the service will create value of shares (at least, I hope so). Then we can think about next step, next our innovation ..... the shares market . Maybe then, we will start to investigate how to collaborate with the NXT or any other distributed network/blockchain solution. But ... this time we need to agree on the choice of service and start its development and soon after advertising. I will share my further suggestion as always, it means, very soon ;-)  Any feedback is welcome ... I feel that we have little time to be the first :-)