Regarding the LPC1343 stuff, Charles has contacted me about my plans for the badge; at the time I proposed it, seemed to be objection to using the LPC1343. I had been ready to go ahead and design something and approach ARM and NXP for sponsorship, however there seemed to be no cohesive action on the sponsorship front, and people didn't want me to contact anyone for sponsorship money until there was an Official sponsorship document. I meet with NXP's application engineers and community reps last week during an event in which a team I was part of was sponsored by them, and that would have been a perfect opportunity to discuss sponsorship. I think these companies would be interested in sponsoring a badge, they were pretty happy to know that we weren't using any microcontrollers from their competitors, and sponsorship would really help towards the budget.
I did design and sell Forebrain, a low-cost LPC1343 board:
http://www.universalair.co.uk/control/forebrain which does have its own noob-friendly libraries. The schematics are available and the libraries are BSD, a good starting point for an LPC1343 board since it's designed to be minimalist, and if people wanted it, at the moment there is no specific license attached to the hardware, if people want I can slap an OSH label on it as long as nobody minds the somewhat lack of documentation.
In any case, there are good arguments for and against LPC1343. I am leaving that decision down to the group, and if you do choose the LPC1343, I would be pleased to be able to help with the design, and if desired, I can make use of some of the resources and contacts of my company for fabrication and assembly.