I spent all Wednesday listening to 23 startup companies pitch business ideas at the WTIA's Fast Pitch Forum. There were some great ideas, one liners and jokes. And even a little news.

In fact, there were so many that I ran out of steam in my coverage plan to critique every pitch. Oh well, here are some of the nuggets I picked up throughout the day.

Draper's dance: WTIA president Ken Myer seemed as surprised as anyone after venture capitalist Tim Draper broke out in song and dance during his keynote address. "That was unconventional," said Myer after wards, adding that Draper had said he was going to wing it during the talk.

Ben Huh's protest: Ben Huh of I Can Has Cheezburger had the entire crowd cracking up with his presentation, which led to many complements after wards. So, Huh was a bit miffed that he didn't win top honors, jokingly asking me to mount a protest through TechFlash on his behalf. Sorry Ben, no go.

Ben Huh

Dressing up: Speaking of Huh, he showed up in his typical business attire. A giant yellow Cheezburger hat and a gray T-shirt with a picture of a cat on it. I am not sure that outfit would fly at Rotary.

A tough act: A few audience members that I spoke to felt a little bad for Widevine. Not only was it the last company to present, but they had to follow a strong line up of consumer-friendly presentations from Ben Huh of I Can Has Cheezburger, Jonathan Sposato of Picnik and Dan Shapiro of Ontela. "I guarantee that my presentation is not going to be that entertaining," said Widevine CEO Brian Baker after Huh's talk.

One liners: It's hard to summarize a business that you've been building for years into an 8-minute talk. Key to success is creating a memorable one liner, and Picnik's Jonathan Sposato has one of the best. "Picnik gives every day, real people photo editing super powers right in a browser."

Picnic vs. Picnik: Sposato also let audience members know that his company's misspelling of the word "picnic" has now risen to the top of the search results in Google. And about 5 minutes into Sposato's presentation the time keeper inadvertently hit the bell, which caught Sposato off guard with three minutes to go. "Oh, OK that's a false ping," he said to laughs from the crowd.

Gist: I caught up with Gist founder T.A. McCann just before his pitch, and he shared an interesting story about the stress of securing the domain name for the Seattle Internet company. Interestingly, it took months for McCann to get the Web site from the owner who was reluctant to sell. Just McCann was about to give up hope and go with another name, the owner of Gist.com gave him a ring. It was good timing, since Gist was only a week away from its launch.

BuddyTV's buyout? BuddyTV's Andy Liu seemed a little knocked off guard when a judge asked directly who will buy the online television community. "That's a good question. I don't know if this is the forum to say that. But we've had multiple opportunities to partner up with other firms, and it is one of those things where it is novel opportunity for people to buy leadership. And we have leadership in television. If you are large portal or if you a large cable provider or whatever you are, you are going to want the largest television destination site on the Web."

Daptiv: Daptiv, the online project management service, was one of the biggest companies at the forum with CEO Jeff Pancottine saying that they expect more than $20 million in revenue this year.

The other Dave Schappell: TeachStreet founder Dave Schappell is getting quite the reputation as the funny guy of Seattle startups. And that wasn't lost on the crowd at the end of his presentation when he solicited votes for the best in show award by holding up a white piece of paper with the letter "S" on it -- for "street" or "stupendous" -- and asked audience members to vote for him. It worked, with TeachStreet, AdReady and Swype earning kudos.

WhitePages or 411: WhitePages, perhaps the only company that was bigger than Daptiv with annual revenue creeping north of $80 million, is in the middle of a rebranding effort. VP of Marketing John Lusk explained that as part of that effort they contemplated dumping the WhitePages name altogether, considering switching to 411.com to appeal to younger consumers. But there's so much brand equity built through more than a 100 years of WhitePages that they stuck with it.

AdReady's board: During his 8-minute presentation, AdReady's Mark Feldman noted that Concur CEO Steve Singh was a board member. Really? That's news to me, since the Seattle online advertising company's Web site doesn't mention it at all. I've got an email into the AdReady folks to confirm it. While Singh leads one of the biggest tech companies in the Seattle area, he doesn't really come from an online advertising background.