Welcome Jazzik! I'm fairly new to VC as well, but I'll give you some insights that I've learned from my time. Tasker integration with VC works awesome using autoremote. I use my prefix as the command filter to let autovoice know to pass the rest of the statement to VC through the TCP/IP plugin. Then I have it scrape TTS back to me through autoremote if I want a response. This lets me issue commands away from home or use any of my android devices as a sort of mobile mic.
As for the kinect, I am, as of today, about to test my living room with the original kinect setup. I currently have VC running on my main PC in the office using a blue yeti as my mic and that works great. I'll report back with results using the kinect in the lving room. I'll be about 9 1/2 feet away, so we'll see how she holds up when the speakers are pumping sound around the room.
Lastly, I recently plunged head first into the zwave party. I got about 6 devices and a veralite all setup in the last 2 weeks. Things have been ok for me on UI7, but I'm not sure what I'm missing with UI5 though. I've been able to get PLEG and PLTS installed and working, although the UI7 really didn't want to register them, but persistence paid off. Other than setting scenes or whatnot, I don't touch the actual UI so it doesn't bother me. A combination of VC, autovera, tasker, and autovoice control everything.