Gnomedex and the male ego

I am here at Gnomedex 6.0 at the Bell Harbor Convention Center in Seattle where snark and chest thumping rule. It's a generalization of this audience, however there have been enough moments in the conference where ego trumped style to destroy an interesting dialog. As an outsider to this world of bloggers and deacons of web2.0, there appears to be ample battles being fought between the bloglines.

Today the most explosive exchange came between Dave Winer and Blake Ross when Dave jumped down Blake's throat for not listening to Firefox users, or something. Blake got defensive and mentioned some post Dave had made on his blog about a Firefox feature Blake was involved in and then it just turned into a lot of shouting. It all seemed very male ego-based and very silly. At least they are passionate about something, although I would love to see more passion expressed around issues that actually mean something in the world.