Why are you so convinced about next that you're comfortable to throw your lot into it ? I'd be interested to hear your views (or anybody else's for that matter).
I came across NXT because someone just casually mentioned it on a Dutch forum.
At first I put some money in to it to make a profit (just another coin, so I thought), which succeeded more than expected (my first buy was at 0,00000725

)
Gradually I put more money in and made more profit. By then I still had done zero research or reading about NXT

The profit was almost immediately put back in to more NXT.
I think it must have been right before the peak at 0,00013000 I really started reading up on NXT (by then already a huge topic on BCT) and became totally amazed about the concept, the flexibility and future possibilities that I did not sell one coin ever since.
The thing I also really enjoy is the lack of inflation through mining. That alone is a blessing.
There's just one thing that "scares" me a bit and that is coming April. I also dislike the secrecy and general "BCnext mystique", but again that's is greatly out weight by all the cool stuff
Oh and let's not forget the community.
EDIT:
James really had it spot-on:
BCNext said something like do not worry about NXT being popular (or valuable). Build a digital economy using NXT. People will use the things we can build with NXT. NXT is like the roads, plumbing and wiring. Not really stuff most people get excited about. We need to build the stores, buildings, movie theatres, even farms (like POPPP has) using NXT. Most people wont know or care that they are using NXT, but of course some people will realize the value of NXT is related to the sum of the value of all the things that can be built on top of NXT.
So the more services we can come up with to build on top of NXT, the more people will indirectly use NXT. As a community, if we can think of things for "normal" people to use built on top of NXT and then making it as easy for them to do this, then the number of NXT users will be much larger than the number of bitcoin users. Also, it will be relatively easy to monetize any significant usage so we can build businesses creating services for people, all on top of NXT.
THINK BIG!
BCNext gave us a platform to build on. Like the Internet protocol when it only supported email. Sure email was useful as compared to faxes, but most people back then actually sent physical letters through the mail! How many protocols run on top of IP today? How many things can we build on top of NXT? What will be the http equivalent for NXT?
James