The panel discussion on how to generate revenue will start promptly at 6:15. For the panel we assembled a rockstar crew who flew in from all over: Damon Darlin (NYT), Michael Arrington (TechCrunch), Fred Wilson (AVC), Jonathan Sposato (Picnik), Ethan Lowry (Urbanspoon) and Brad Jefferson (Animoto) will all be there.

Of course if you’re stuck at work or couldn’t make it to Seattle you can watch a live stream of the Naked Truth event courtesy of our friends at Seattle 2.0 TV.

Update: We’ve removed the live stream now that the event is over and replaced it with the recordings from the folks at Seattle 2.0 TV.

You can also follow the action and join the discussion on Twitter; folks are using the #nakedtruth hashtag.

Lastly, here’s the slides we handed out to attendees with all the gory details on Redfin’s, Urbanspoon’s, picnik’s and animoto’s revenue metrics:

Thanks to our sponsors, Madrona, Fenwick & Square 1 Bank for making this a free event for the attendees, Seattle 2.0 TV for bringing it to the web and Angela for pulling everything together.

Enjoy! And look for our wrap up of the event later tonight.

In case you don’t have an hour to watch the whole thing, we’ve summarized the juicy bits.

FV is Fred Vogelstein from Wired, JC is John Cook from the Seattle PI, MA is Michael Arrington from TechCrunch, RB is Rebecca Buckman from the WSJ, TD is Tricia Duryee from the Seattle Times.

*~*~*~*~*

5:15, MA: If you have a really cool product it doesn’t matter how much of a buffoon you are, it’s going to get written about.

5:45, MA: Get rid of all the marketing crap that you’ve learned… Start with MySpace and say it’s different in this way or that way.

6:30, RB: What we do and what Michael does is now very, very different. The considerations are very different for a blog, a newspaper, a monthly magazine.

8:05, FV: Essentially what all of us do is we traffic in smart people.

9:36, JC: I would encourage everyone to give me the scoop first… I don’t get bent out of shape if it gets pitched to both [PI and Seattle Times] organizations.

11:06, TD: If you’re trying to pitch something for the largest newspaper, things trickle down hill.11:55, RB: What we like to do is bigger-picture trend stories… if it has been mentioned in other publications or other blogs, that’s ok, we can use that as a news-peg… but the Journal is very picky, as far as if the trend story has been written somewhere else, we’re not going to do it.

13:30, TD: Even if you send us a press release and you don’t hear back from us, it’s not like we just hit delete and are not even reading it… If I get five e-mails on a similar topic, I can see that the trend is happening…

14:30, MA [on PR firms]: Some PR firms are ok and some flat out lie manipulate and steal to get what they want. They think that we care a lot about exclusives… I don’t really care about exclusives, because I feel like if I write a better story, because I’m a blogger I have a natural advantage because others blogs links to each other… I don’t care that much about exclusives… what I don’t want to be is second… I don’t mind being the same time as everybody else.

16:25, RB: I would think for me a scoop is more what we call a concept scoop… it’s more like, hey, you’re the first publication that connected these dots and put the concept scoop together.

17:30, FV: A handful [of pr firms] can pick up the phone and call me and say they’re having a dinner with such and such company I’ve never heard of and because I know they’ve taken the time to be serious about choosing their clients, I’ll probably go. If you wind up getting a PR for the sake of lightening your work load I think that’s probably a mistake, you guys are the best sales men for your ideas and your companies.

19:00, FV: Every once and a while just to be evil if I know the CEO, I’ll call the CEO up and say you know you should fire your PR firm.

20:00, JC: I’m always looking for a news hook. For me a lot of the times that news hook is a financing event… just because a financing event is a transformative event in a company’s history.

20:45, MA: A lot of times, I’m not super-interested in hearing a PR rep’s idea of a trend and how their video site fits into it. I feel like it’s my job to come up with that.

22:30, FV [on how to approach a journalist]: Become a source of mine, tell me what is going on in the industry that you’re starting your company in. Tell me about the VC’s that are smart and the VC’s that are dumb.

23:00, MA: [Michael calls out Fred on giving more coverage to his sources, since Michael has been criticized for making the same comment before.]

24:15, RB: Not only can it suck your wallet dry, I feel like PR firms can suck the life out of you… If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re doing it for a reason, and if that kind of interest and passion is relayed to us, that makes us more interested in what you’re doing.

25:00,TD: Don’t worry about being completely polished.

25:20, TD [responding to a question about how to spin a journalist]: Why do you want to spin us? Are you doing something illegal?

27:15, JC [on ducking a question]: If there’s information that you don’t want to share, just tell me I can’t comment on that and leave it at that… just be straight up.

28:45, MA [on how to prepare for an interview]: Get the CEO on phone, you [as a PR rep] are not going to be able to know the product to the detail I want to hear about. If you’re the CEO, it doesn’t really matter, you know the product, I’m going to dig it out of you… I like to disrupt the story immediately by asking random questions… and try not to waste time… Some times a five minute conversation leads to a much better story than an hour conversation would.

30:50, RB: The worst thing is when you’re talking, they say something really interesting and then AFTER they say it, they say you can’t print that, that’s off the record.

32:05, FV [on if you screw up on the record]: You beg.

33:15, JC [on takign something off the record]: If it’s really important to the story, I will fight to get that in there. If it’s a guy that just misspeaks, and says something silly, I’m going to cut him some slack.

34:30, MA: I have two sets of negotations when I talk to an entrepeneur, one is tell me everything, and two is now ok tell me what you’re ok with me printing.

36:45, TD: if the facts are wong, you should let us know immediately… [But if it’s just an opinion from another source you don’t like,] that’s the breaks when you’re talking to a reporter.

37:33 JC: I really like follow-up after an interview… you have it in e-mail which is easy to access.

40:00 FV [on the company that is the best at PR]: I’d say Microsoft [laughter].

40:15 JC: I APPRECIATE SCOOPS.

43:40, RB: We have some very, very high ethical standards at the Journal and that’s something that everybody who works there is very proud of.

46:00, MA: A lot of the young entrepreneurs are a little bit nuts in Silicon Valley, I actually forget the name of the disease they have, they’re so smart they cannot communicate with other human beings… literally people have this. They’re always a lot of trouble.

46:40, FV [on the most surreal interview]: I got to interview Jeff Bezos jumping on a trampoline… yes we were naked.

48:00, FV on getting into TechCrunch or Wired: It’s just personal, we hate you [laughter].

48:25, MA: It’s not their fault, it’s your fault. You can’t force this stuff… spending more money on PR is not going get into these publications… I mean it’ll get you into mine, I’ll write about you [laughter].

49:30, FV [on focusing first on the trade press]: Success breeds success… that’s exposure we’re all going to see. Whenever I try to get up to speed… I’ll pull tons of stories.

52:40, MA [on the importance of entrepreneur’s blogs]: I think it’s really important. When you have a blog you become 100 times more important to me as a reader than you were before. Because you have your own voice and you can link back… I think every entrepreneur should have a blog.

53:30, FV: It takes a huge amount of work. It absolutely builds credibility and it probably builds more credibility than any PR firm you could hire but it has to be reasonably transparent.

54:50, RB [on what entrepreneurs’ blogs are good]: [Redfin’s] blog is excellent [screams of joy].

55:25, JC: I do like the Redfin blog… I think Zillow does a really good job, they’ve made it a really important part of their PR strategy and it shows.

55:30, MA: Yeah, but don’t break your own news on your own blog, give it to us [laughter among the panelists].

That’s it! To read more, check out what John Cook, Dipika Kohli and Tricia Duryee have to say…

Our bonus link today comes via the Second Friend of Redfin from the Washington Post: Attorneys for two United Arab Emirates leaders urged a federal judge Monday to dismiss a lawsuit filed on behalf of thousands of children forced to ride racing camels…

And yet everybody — hundreds of people — seemed to have a blast. Our goal in hosting the event was to foster direct conversations between journalists, bloggers and Seattle’s entrepreneurs and that was how it seemed to work out. It felt like things could happen between people that don’t normally happen, probably because I drank more than I should.

There was a panel then a party. I was so nervous handling the introductions that Dave Hanley asked from the back of the crowd if I was doing alright.

Just before the panel started, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington told Wired’s Fred Vogelstein to get to the freaking point, then rolling his eyes, explained to everyone that he was quoting the Fred Vogelstein dossier that a PR agency accidentally mailed to Fred Vogelstein. Later he pulled in everyone’s else’s microphones so that they all sat in front of him and then leaned back, smiling.

Fred said that you should hire an agency, but only if they’re unlikely to work with you (the elite, selective firms). The WSJ’s Becky Buckman admitted to having a soft spot for goofy, impassioned pitches from entrepreneurs (by e-mail, so you don’t freak her out too much). The PI’s John Cook, looking healthy and quick in a Ho Chi Minh outfit, explained that he doesn’t mind talking to crazy people — our eyes met — but that follow-up clarifications (BY E-MAIL) are always appreciated.

One brave entrepreneur stood up to say how he and his agency had tried to get into Wired and TechCrunch; Michael Arrington told him you never will (”We just hate you,” Fred chimed in, jokingly. “It’s not them, it’s you,” Michael said). MC Greg Gottesman asked the Seattle Times’s Tricia Duryee how best to spin a story, and Tricia asked, “why not just tell the truth?” Then she teased John Cook about whose circulation was bigger.

On the subject of scoops, Becky Buckman explained that she likes to have a “concept exclusive,” in which she can tell a meaningful story behind events that others may have already covered. Michael Arrington said he didn’t need an exclusive scoop on a story, so long as a news embargo was taken seriously by everybody else (I think I saw him check his iPhone in the middle of the panel). John Cook was asked what his favorite kind of story was and immediately replied “AN EXCLUSIVE.”

Becky was unexpectedly moving in a comment about ethics in journalism. Michael begged people to eliminate “revolutionary” and anything else that sounds like marketing babble from their vocabularies, suggesting instead that companies pitch themselves like movies (”‘Tootsie” meets ‘The Longest Yard’” –>”MySpace for senior citizens”). He also said he couldn’t fathom the reason an entrepreneur wouldn’t blog, explaining that the network of links between blogs is the currency for exchanging information and traffic between his site and theirs — then added, but “don’t break your own news on your blog.”

As the panel wound down, a gigantic barbecue trailer backed into the parking lot. Its ghastly perfume wafted over the audience, but their attention never wavered. The panel was great — really lively — and it was good too.

And wasn’t Greg Gottesman a magnificent host? He never looked at any notes, he never sounded like the teacher in Charlie Brown, he spread the action around to all the panelists.

Then the party got underway. One partygoer asked another how his social networking site was different than others (answer: “you’re an asshole.”) iLike’s Hadi Partovi, modeling his own company t-shirt underneath a blazer, looked every inch the hip Web 2.0 entrepreneur. Amit Mital, Redfin’s first fanatical investor, demanded extra drink tickets for his years of support. An intern, Alex Loddengaard, asked my wife out to dinner (she said yes).

A kindly young woman challenged Fred Vogelstein, who flew up for the event in the middle of a deadline, to explain why Wired put a half-naked woman on its cover (answer: “I didn’t think they’d go for it either.”) Michael Arrington trampled me on the way to the bar.

Tricia Duryee wore big sunglasses. Peter Cochran looked like a model for a surfing magazine. Paul Goodrich talked up his Croatian triathlon training regimen. Our progenitor, David Eraker, suddenly stood before me, a large, happy presence.

Michael Dougherty battled back a horde of Redfin engineers from recruiting a colleague at his new startup. With his deep, knee-buckling voice, Matt Goyer asked a woman about interviewing at Redfin (”my boss is right over there,” she squeaked).

After months of harassing us about Safari support, Mike Davidson suddenly appeared in the flesh to take my chest-heaving, tearful confession. (I tried to blame Microsoft. He introduced me to his friend from Microsoft).

A man told me his name had been erased from the invitation wiki by a saboteur. John Cook overhead him, and smelling a juicy story, suggested we go back through the edit history to find the culprits.

Someone complained to me about a beer shortage. I told him Zillow drank it.

Angela Cough promised there would be a vegetarian option (the corn bread was terrible). Cynthia Pang pointed someone out and said “That girl is NOT nice!” Angela nodded violently, arms folded across her chest, menacing even when pregnant.

I wobbled out of the party while the sun was just setting behind the mountains, on one of the longest days of a very short and wonderful summer.

Many, many thanks to the journalists who took the time to come to the event, to the team at Havana Social Club for hosting a great party, to Angela Cough and Elise Hebb for putting it together, to Cynthia Pang for coming up with the name and helping out, to Madrona for helping us pay for so much of it, to iLike, Wetpaint, Jobster, Farecast and WildTangent for their support, to everyone who came. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

We all had a really good time. Please tag your Flickr photos with nakedtruth. We’ll post the video in a jiffy. Any details we forgot about, or that John Cook didn’t address in his excellent post, just add a comment.

This year, we’re doing something bigger. First of all, we’re bringing in the barbecue pit. More importantly, we’re on a mission to introduce journalists to entrepreneurs, so that little companies with big ideas can put themselves on the map, and figure out how they want to talk to the press. With a tip of the hat to Robert Scoble, we’re calling the event The Naked Truth.

Rebecca Buckman from the Wall Street Journal, Fred Vogelstein from Wired, Michael Arrington from TechCrunch, John Cook from the Seattle PI and Tricia Duryee from the Seattle Times will be on a pre-party panel to answer questions. And startup bigshots like Hugh Crean, Hadi Partovi, Jason Goldberg and Ben Elowitz will be in the crowd to ask.

Here are the details:
When: Tuesday, July 24, 2007. The panel starts at 5:30, the party starts at 6:30.
Where: The Havana Social Club, 1010 East Pike Street, Seattle
Who: every entrepreneur, dreamer, procastinator, narcissist, coder, starter, joiner, flim-flam man, gonzo PR guy, bigshot, littleshot and networking twizzler in town… please come!

Madrona Venture Group and Redfin are paying for the kegs and the ‘cue, and iLike, WetPaint, Farecast, Jobster and WildTangent are helping us put it together. If you want to come, you have to sign up in advance, or overpower our HGH-juiced Cambodian bouncer at the door. Panel attendance is limited to 200 people. We’ve tented a nearby parking lot so the party can handle 500.

Madrona’s Greg Gottesman, master of ceremonies for the panel, has already laid down the law for his approach: “I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass—and I’m all out of bubble gum.”

Edit the wiki to put your name on the list…

Savan’s truck went up in smoke trying to haul eight elephant kegs. Rob had to snatch monitors off everyone’s desk (”I don’t care if people are still using them!”) so we could blow out the demo stations. Two Canadian bloggers grabbed a stone-age boulder to help us pile-drive real estate yard signs onto every corner, completely oblivious to their charming accent. Angela got back on on the scene at six with bags of lemons and ice and whipped everyone into shape.

And then the party got ROLLING. Some customers ganged up on us and gave us some great ideas on how to make our service even better. Brian Marsh, freshly shaved for the first time in a week, talked up some demure developers that we’ve been trying to recruit for months. Women swooned over NPR’s John Moe, because he plays in a band, and contributes to McSweeney’s, and has a nice voice too. The temperature shot up to 1,000 degrees.

I complained to Zillow’s Amy Bohutinsky that my daily Zillow alert breaks my heart, every day, and then, oddly but kindly, some Zillow developers gave me some encouragement for my speech, which no one heard. Bryan Selner told me to say we’re hiring, Sean Richter said something even better, which I forgot. David Eraker was proudly wearing his realtor pin. Ryan Erickson demonstrated a facility with tapping kegs that was disturbing for someone so young. Bahn demo’d Redfin ’til he was hoarse, and Eric told everybody about the Redfin techcrunch discount.

TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington, taller and shyer than I’d thought he’d be, but just as smart (like a big, quiet kid whom the coach couldn’t recruit for the football team), was mobbed. Somebody with headphones and a big mike was interviewing everybody. Madrona’s Greg Gottesman was working the room in a dazzling white blazer, and Peter Cochran was gathering an entrepreneur with a good idea into Vulcan’s clutches.

And then at the end, when the scavengers were picking through the pizza and soft drinks that nobody drank, and we had to take down the signs and roll out the empty kegs, our launch was over, and we had time to remember Emily Dickinson’s line that “nothing is half so sad as a battle lost except a battle won.”

If you took pictures, post them to Flickr, and tag them techcrunchseattle.

When was the last time a party like this came together? You’d have to go back to P. Diddy’s 2004 birthday, as covered by no less than three reporters from The Gray Lady, back when Harold Raines was promising “to flood the zone” on major events… (legally licensed from the NYT)

Some Dreadful Man Misled Her Again, No Doubt
The New York Times, November 9, 2004
By JOYCE WADLER; WITH MELENA Z. RYZIK AND JULIA CHAPLIN

You know the aggravation you have when, say, the ARDMAN bat mitzvah is scheduled the same day as the JONES bat mitzvah?

It was kind of like that Thursday night when the premiere of JAY-Z’s concert film, ”Fade to Black,” was held the very night of P. DIDDY’s birthday coronation, or as the invitation termed it, the Royal Birthday Ball. The buzz on the red carpet involved what everybody was wearing to the Diddy party. Mr. Diddy tends to be rather tyrannical at his events. His invitation — which specified that guests had ”a duty to fulfill” and must dress ”like style icons” — even provided a list of approved designers.

Mr. Z., on the carpet at his own event, was taking it so seriously that when a reporter complimented him on the black great coat with a plush collar, striped shirt and fluffed polka-dotted tie, he got a little upset.

”Oh, no, no, no, no, no, hold on, don’t get it messed up,” he said. ”I got another suit for Puffy’s.”

Mr. Diddy, for his part, showed up at Mr. Z.’s event in track suit and sunglasses. He was in a particularly good mood. When the Hot 97 D.J. SUNNY started to ask him a question, he grabbed her mike. Then, in a voice that reminded us of MARILYN MONROE crooning to J.F.K., he starting singing. ”Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me!” he sang. ”Happy birthday, dear Diddy, happy birthday to meeeeeeee!”

There was a shout from somewhere on the line.

”Diddy, I didn’t know you sing!”

”Yeah, I sing. I do it all, baby! ” Mr. Diddy said.

Then he turned his attention back to Sunny’s mike.

”Hot 97, here’s your boy Diddy. I’m here supporting my man HOV” (that would be Jay-Z).

But to the Diddy event, at Cipriani Wall Street.

”In the faraway land of P. Diddy’s royal kingdom where there are grand soirees all the time, there is one grander than all, the Royal Birthday Ball,” the invitation read in part. ”Your code of dress shall begin with silk, velvet and other luxurious fabrics and end beautifully in hand-tailored suits and gorgeous dresses flown in from the fashion houses of Paris.”

The invitation did not stipulate that on the red carpet PARIS HILTON should pull her gown so high that everyone could see she wasn’t wearing any underwear. But that after all is what makes her a fashion icon.

Another elegant moment on the red carpet: TARA REID’s black gown slipping and exposing a breast.

Anyway, it was a grand event.

Violinists serenaded guests at the entrance of the cavernous old bank building. Inside, canopy beds and claw-footed bathtubs had been set up to suggest Mr. Diddy’s notion of royalty — or a back issue of Penthouse. Guests were subjected to a barrage of giant pictures on the wall of the life of P. Diddy: Mr. Diddy with his daddy, Mr. Diddy with NOTORIOUS B.I.G. Mr. Diddy, microphone in hand, stood on a raised platform and babbled on about — who else? — Mr. Diddy.

Among the celebrants: VICTORIA GOTTI in a black strapless gown that looked as if it had been ripped from one of her bodice rippers, MARIAH CAREY in what appeared to be a wedding gown, BRUCE WILLIS, GEORGE HAMILTON, VIKRAM CHATWELL, SANTE D’ORAZIO, ZAC POSEN, DONNA KARAN and BETSEY JOHNSON.

Ms. Hilton, in the early, relatively sedate hours of the party, could be seen chatting and smiling sweetly at P. Diddy’s mom, JANICE COMBS.

(”Oh, what a nice, sweet little girl,” we could see a mom saying later, though not a mom like Ms. Combs, who was wearing a 30’s style white satin gown and white fur stole — and is nobody’s fool.)

Soon after midnight, the room became a sea of cocktails spilling and champagne flutes flying.

NAOMI CAMPBELL danced in a hooded pink evening gown while USHER skulked a few paces behind.

TOMMY HILFIGER, in a gray top hat and three-piece suit, looked a bit dazed.

Eventually, a giant tiered birthday cake was wheeled out and several barely dressed women jumped out and sang — what else — ”Hey, P. Diddy!” Then several modelesque women plucked petals from the rose sculpture and hurled them at him.

”More alcohol!” Mr. Diddy yelled.

Why come? Seattle already has plenty of functions for business people to eat tasty breakfasts (Seattle’s Rotary Club is the most powerful in the nation), but that doesn’t quite bring together the berserk energy of a whole bunch of start-ups getting to know one another and sharing ideas. There’s a reason that, even in a largely virtual world, start-ups tend to cluster around a few spots, like Silicon Valley and Seattle. And the reason is that every once in a while, the entrepreneurs need to emerge from their offices to meet, perchance to talk, and to drink too much.

Check back here tomorrow, and we’ll confirm that we’ve been able to rig up wireless for you to show off whatever you’re building. The event is next Wednesday, May 31, from 6:30 – 11 at ConWorks, a funky artistic space south of Lake Union.

Redfin’s Eric Heller rode his bike from our office earlier this afternoon to get some pictures:

Isn’t that pretty? See you next week!