For those non-techies out there, Gnomedex is a terrific annual technology conference thrown by Seattle blogger Chris Pirillo. Unlike other conferences, Chris has designed Gnomedex as more of an open forum -- attendees are encouraged to challenge the speakers and blog their impressions in real-time. So it wasn't too out of the ordinary when Dave Winer spoke up during Jason Calcanis' presentation and called it "conference spam." (Calcanis was plugging his new search engine, which Winer thought was too promotional). Moments later, Winer blogged about how he didn't like Calcanis' search engine, and then Calcanis blogged about how he didn't like getting dissed from Winer in the middle of his speech, and then other bloggers started linking them and taking sides.... my oh my. "The best part of this fight," explains the Eye on Winer blog, "They sat three seats apart at Gnomedex while posting the blog entries that turned them from BFFs to FU2s."

A light moment at Gnomedex. Photo from Laughing Squid, more here.

Adds Rex in comments: "This 'feud' was so retarded. Two self-promoters self-promoting with an artificially-constructed debate about... something no one cared about anyway."