Hallway

### Overview In this SAINTCON Hallway interview, host Pope sits down with Victor (known by the handle "m Juju" / "Mind Juju"), a long-time community organizer in the Utah technology space. The conversation covers Victor's background, his work establishing Utah Open Source and the OpenWest conference, memorable stories from past events, and hints about an upcoming lab initiative designed to bridge gaps between industry, academia, government, and the tech community.

### Key Topics - **Handle Origin & Geek Cred**: Victor explains his handle "m Juju" (Mind Juju), chosen around 2000 as a creative alternative inspired by the term "juju" meaning magic, alongside movie references like *Hackers* where the character Joey brainstorms handles including "Dr. Doom." - **Utah Open Source & Community Building**: Victor discusses the mission of Utah Open Source, an umbrella organization formed to support various regional user groups and trade associations (such as Provo Linux, Utah PHP users, and the Ogden Area Linux User Group / OLUG) with resources, speakers, and meetings. - **OpenWest Conference**: Looking back at OpenWest, an open-source technology conference that grew to between 1,500 and 2,000 attendees, highlighting the heavy logistical effort involved in staging the event and feeding deployment crews. - **Upcoming Lab Project**: A brief preview of an initiative slated for announcement that aims to recreate the mission of OpenWest on a continuous, daily basis by establishing pipelines connecting industry, academia, government, and the tech community.

### Technical Details & Conference Incidents - **The Wolverine Wi-Fi Pineapple Incident**: At an early SAINTCON presence held in conjunction with OpenWest at Utah Valley University (UVU), Dr. Unicorn and others obtained permission to deploy a Wi-Fi Pineapple rogue access point broadcasting "Wolverine Wi-Fi." Attendees connecting to the network were routed to a captive portal (associated with 801 Labs / DC801) displaying a spinning unicorn graphic warning "you could have been hacked." Victor had to intervene when an upset security consultant threatened legal action after falling for the test. - **OpenWest Bandwidth Dispute**: At a non-UVU venue, OpenWest paid $20,000 for a contracted 500 Mbps connection. Minutes before the keynote, tests revealed severe latency (taking 10 seconds to load google.com). While venue management blamed the conference's hardware, Victor appealed directly to an audience of around 1,000 attendees to troubleshoot. Network engineers in the crowd quickly pinpointed the bottleneck: the venue's gateway was running on a virtualized Windows 2000 server, resulting in a full refund from the venue.

### Takeaways Victor emphasizes the enduring value of hands-on community initiatives, knowledge sharing, and technical problem-solving. Beyond community projects, Victor notes he is currently seeking new career opportunities in the field, while sharing personal interests in 800s movie trivia, music, hiking, and photography.