Arab dot Net

You sure have heard about the event taking place in Lebanon nowadays. Yes, I am speaking about ArabNet 2010, whose hashtag - #ArabNet - has made it to twitter's worldwide trending topics today. As far as I understand, Arab entrepreneurs demonstrate their startups there, and some sessions were given to them about fund raising, social marketing, etc.

I really like the idea of having such kind of events here in the region. To me it sounds more like DemoCamp, which took place earlier in UAE, Egypt, and may be other Arab countries as well. In fact, such events are as good as the quality of the startups in there, and the number of VC's and Angel Investors attending them. And I guess, given such huge buzz around ArabNet, a good number of investors should be attending it, on contrary to DemoCamp! Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing a list of the participating startups and a brief introduction on each of them.

Finally, as usual, some people here and there on twitter started to attack the event. And I am sure anyone of you will be able to expect what those attackers say even without listening to them. Exactly! They accuse the sessions to be boring, and criticizing the use of English language in the event while it's an *Arab* dot net. Deal with it guys, English is the de facto language for businesses nowadays, and if you really want to attract the likes of "Y Combinator", "Reid Hoffman", and "Benchmark Capital" you have to market your startup in English. And back to the coolness of the sessions thing, I haven't been there to tell, and so are most of the attackers.