I could have used additional help on organizing elements within a complex project. Slowly, the suggestions by regular contributors have begun to sink in and now I think I could do a better job of organizing than my initial (and largest) project to date. Specifically--
Demonstrate the recommended workflow of creating geometry on layer 0, grouping or componenting that geometry and moving it to a defined layer.
Stressing that elements of a group or component can exist on different layers. I have no idea why someone would want this to happen (is there an instance where this would be advantageous?). Show how to best "fix" things should you inadvertently get a group spread across different layers.
Stressing the workflow championed by Solo--creating pieces of the total and saving those components out to their own .skp file and importing them into a master composition file. This approach makes a lot of sense to me now for reasons of organizational and library-building.
I agree the Intro to Rubies tut would be a good thing. Another idea would be to preview a number of the most useful rubies to show just what they do and how they work, and perhaps discuss differences between rubies that do similar things.