Love it or hate it, Apple has managed to build a loyal following, hype up every product launch and update, and pull far more press coverage than most companies would dream of. Unfortunately, all of this comes at a price that many, particularly the Linux community, are not willing to pay: secrecy. Secrecy means hiding your products until the release day. Secrecy means taking no input from the outside if you can help it. Secrecy is everything that free, libre, open-source software stands against in one word.

Is there no hope, then, to achieve the same hype Apple gets within the world of free software? No, it is possible. The hype Apple receives does not, in my opinion, inherently derive from the secrecy. In fact, most of Apple’s hype comes from the event and Jobs’ ability to excite the audience. Now, you might be saying that there are lots of Linux events out there already. Does a presenter like Jobs come up on stage and discuss only the most amazing bling features of Linux at any of these events? I didn’t think so.

What can the Linux world do, then? I believe that an annual conference of the most interesting people from the free software community doing the most interesting things from an end-user and bling perspective should be put together. Each speaker could be selected by an online voting process. Chosen speakers should then be given some coaching by experts on what to present and how best to present it. I don’t want anyone up there talking about how their project works with X.Org or how the project’s code is designed.

During the event, each speaker would be given a slot to:

1. Demonstrate the cool features of their project
2. Briefly describe the near future of their project
3. And present their plan for the long term future and direction of their project

Additionally, some influential people in the community might be invited to give their overall vision of the future of Linux and open-source software.

This event would give press a place to focus their attention, provide users with a place to learn about and see the coolest projects in the open-source world, and generally build the hype that Apple enjoys around Linux and open-source software, all without sacrificing a bit of openness.