Donovan Schulteis was kind enough to give me some moments of his time, and we had a friendly chat in a private BeShare window. Just before he went for dinner, he answered a few questions...

How are you feeling right now, knowing that you completed the world's first event of WalterCon?
I feel very satisfied. I knew that it wouldn't be something huge from the beginning, and expected less than was delivered. The whole experience was great, on both the conference level, and the things that happened behind the scenes.

Can you share a particular moment at the conference that changed something with your outlook on Haiku?
Not really. Most of what was presented in the conference I was already well aware of in the prior months. There were no surprises for me, since beunited.org and Haiku have been working together on things at the executive level. I suppose my defining moment was the demo of Java Bryan gave me the night before - I hadn't known that he was able to do that yet, since that happened only days before.

That event had me amped for most of the conference. Something related to the whole experience here, I realized the gravity of the situation. There is a lot to do yet, we are not right around the corner. Haiku is getting closer, and closer, and the gravity of how much ground both organizations need to cover before there is an OS out there complete... We're all gonna be extremely busy for a long time to come.

Do you see your role in beunited.org becoming more difficult as time goes on, or will there be a point where things will actually get easier as more exposure to Haiku is generated?
I haven't been very active with beunited.org the past couple of years, mostly due to real life going on a rollercoaster (the past 2 1/2 years, I've only lived with my family for a total of maybe 7 months, other than weekends). Simon has been pretty much running everything, and I'm glad he's been able to do the good job he has been, since he's busy too, and carrying the weight of many responsibilities within beunited.org.

And I'll say this upfront, nothing for myself or beunited.org gets easier from this point on... indefinitely. I had already planned to increase my presence in my role in beunited.org since my personal life is finally settling down. However, this conference, and the discussions that I've had with others in private meetings made me realize that there is such a long way for us (beunited.org) to go, and it is imperative we get there about the same time a completed Haiku is available.

With that date an unknown target... it's even harder to determine our schedules - we have to move as fast as we can, and as hard as we can, so we can be where we need to be when Haiku is released. Not knowing that date, we need to move faster and harder than we really can, just to be sure we can beat Axel, et al, to the finish line. We have a ton of things we need to do and have ready if we are to be where we need to be. If Michael was to get the Haiku team to finish now, beunited.org... well.... luckily, we might have the time. How much time is unknown...

The answer, everyone is going to have so much to do, both beunited.org and Haiku. Haiku must have all their peices in place, beunited.org must meet them with our peices. Yes, things will only get more difficult from here.

How much is there left to do related to the not-for-profit status of beunited.org?
Simon relayed to me this past weekend that we do have the IRS approval. I have not seen any paperwork stating such, and will be contacting our lawyer in the coming weeks to solidify this and get everything that needs done after that completed.

Can you announce any roadmap ideas related to Haiku at this time?
Our first and foremost priority, is the developer's portal. Java is our primary longterm concern to finish. Not that finishing soon will make an R1 distro. We still need to go through Sun's certification and testing, so even if Andrew and Bryan finished tomorrow, it will still be quite a while, and they will not finish that soon. But the sooner we can submit it to Sun, the sooner we can get it to the community.

After that, we need to start doing several items tandemly, getting them ramped up and ready. This includes finishing the definition of standards as well as the projects that are currently in the works.

Obviously, since we will be using Haiku as our reference platform, we also need to increase our efforts towards our membership distro. This includes securing licenses for applications, finishing our own projects, and gathering other resources. We can't release our reference platform or member distro until Haiku is completed, but there is no reason we can't start thinking about and planning those things now.

We also need to move forward and start building things like user support and documentation and expanding/starting other projects.

That's sort of a brief overview. More details to come in the coming months.

Do you think now is a good time for grassroots marketing, or should the Haiku Community wait till there is more to present?
Grassroots marketing now would be great... we, as a community, need to get out and let everyone know what Haiku is (and was), and that the dream that once was BeOS is not dead. However, there will be the naysayers that will say things like "show it to me now". Full on marketing efforts are going to have to wait until there is a product to show.

beunited.org is concerning itself for the near future, as it has been doing, with making sure the community understands us, and what we are trying to do. We will begin our full marketing efforts when we have something to show the world.

How much interest has there been from corporate entities, that you can share publically?
I think the safe ground to say here is that there is interest from corporate entities, but they are waiting for the pudding. Until Haiku and beunited.org can actually show them something they can use and profit from, they will always remain on the sidelines watching with interest.

More than a dozen?
I've personally spoken with a couple, but then again, I've not been as active, and Simon has been running things for the last two years. Both Simon and Michael are the people to ask numbers from. I would venture to guess that there are "serious" interests well over a dozen, but again, wrong one to ask. That isn't to say that I think that as soon as we have a product, the money will start pouring in. No, I think it's going to be a long, hard road before we can start paying people to do this full time.

What details do you know about Java that haven't already been announced publically so far?
None. ;) Actually, we announced where we are as of today. Bryan is hoping that a Swing announcement will follow very shortly. AWT just happened, and I was caught of guard, pleasantly, by Bryan showing me that the night before the demo. There is a lot more work for AWT, but I think the major hurdles have all be overcome and now it's just a matter of time to finish, and more time for Sun to let us distribute it. There will be some silent time after we finish that everyone will have to deal with, since Sun will be holding the bag at that time.

Thanks Deej.
My pleasure. ;)