What we need is some organization.
A team of people as you say with defined roles and agendas like any good organization.

If i have a sports club here we have a chairperson, treasurer, secretary, committee members, sub committees and general volunteers.

None of whom are paid but willing to work on behalf of the organization. They will make plans, set out the agenda for the next few years and divide up the relevant work into the committees for them to finds ways of making it work.

We actually have a great sports club in my area and it's down to a team of hard working individuals that put it together and make it all happen.

Every month their will be a meeting to discuss how things are progressing and continue to make plans and drive things forward.

Now I'm not saying that we need to be this defined but we do need some sort of structure and agenda as an eco-system to move forward.

A group of people to set out plans for the next 3-5 years.
To publish what is being worked on.
To publish all the code and tools that exist for people wanting to build.
To be a point of contact for devs and other parties with questions.
To drive forward partnerships and marketing.

I would much rather that the money from valueplan was used to hire one person as a chairperson and full time employee of the chain to organize this and chair meetings and work on behalf of the community than to fund a rally car and trips abroad.

Splinterlands have done something similar with @clayboyn to great effect as he is now working tirelessly on behalf of their community and making things happen.

It would be hard to get this going as a purely voluntary role as it would take so much time to make it work successfully but if we hired on qualified person to drive it forward, backed by a team of volunteers and put everything out in the open where people can find it and can see what is being built and what we could be building.