I do not agree with your vision, Dylan; you can not say people is not listening to the marketing team or the board, that is simply not true.
2 years ago a roadmap was published on the Plone site; when that document was published many people (including me) made comments. so here we are in 2014 and I ask why we do not have such document updated?
currently, AFAIK, we do not have an official position neither from the marketing team, nor from the board on what is the vision of Plone in the short/mid/long term. we only have personal opinions of people like Steve and Eric, but, again, these are not official positions of the community.
yes we can discuss them, agree or not with them, but as long as nobody seats down and came with a resume of such debates they lead to nowhere.
many things have changed since 2008; we better review the state of the technology and the trends before trying to implement a vision from eons ago. Deco, the grid system, for instance, was revolutionary then, today is dead before arrival.
leaving just developers to decide the future of something as complex (and important) as Plone is a big mistake (even worst if you let it to unguided, highly-motivated, young developers); developers most of the time lack the strategic vision that is only accomplished by a mature multidisciplinary team like the one we had on the past.
if we do not fix that, Plone is going to slowly die as a viable project.