Haven't used Appspace before, but have used a Maximo Start Center as a dashboard on a monitor in a shared space many times. The biggest thing outside of designing a set of portlets for the Start Center, was configuring the application to refresh itself routinely. This can be done by modifying a JSP file - I might have to write a blog article on it soon.
If this is something you're interested in, I'm happy to share my experiences.
-Alex