It would be really useful to have a shield(s) that you could solder a small surface-mount part to.  Definitely for advanced users, since reflow would be difficult with the plastic connector on the bottom.

I envision a surface mount footprint on the top, with through-hole pins corresponding to the pins on the chip, then an outer ring of pins to breakout the 'duino.  high density headers could then be soldered in to jumper the device's pins to the 'duino pins.

Hmm, I'm not sure I follow you. There are way to many surface mount / QFM foot prints to be able to have breakout boards for all of them.

But on a side note, there are a lot of board houses that will make circuit boards for you really cheap.
This one http://dorkbotpdx.org/wiki/pcb_order takes and combines projects together in one big board to help reduce your cost.

We do have some ideas in the works for more / different Proto Boards, not sure if we are going to do a surface mount proto board.

Hmm, I'm not sure I follow you. There are way to many surface mount / QFM foot prints to be able to have breakout boards for all of them.

But on a side note, there are a lot of board houses that will make circuit boards for you really cheap.
This one http://dorkbotpdx.org/wiki/pcb_order takes and combines projects together in one big board to help reduce your cost.

We do have some ideas in the works for more / different Proto Boards, not sure if we are going to do a surface mount proto board.

Oshpark is cheap if you just need 3 boards, Seeed Studio PCB https://www.seeedstudio.com/fusion_pcb.html would be much cheaper if you need more boards.