Lebanon: ArabNet discussed the future of Arabic web in English · Global Voices
Anas Qtiesh

Photo Courtesy of Roobee
Arabnet 2010 is a tech conference that was held in Beirut on March 25 and 26. The conference is the first international conference for the Arab web industry, bringing together leaders from across the MENA, Europe and Silicon Valley to discuss cutting-edge trends and emerging opportunities. While many of the participants considered it a success, there was a major criticism that kept people talking and writing about it days after the conference was concluded. The problem was that while the conference supposedly focused on Arabic web, it adopted English as its official language and the website, discussions, and presentations were all in English.
Bent Masreya [ar] who was one of the official bloggers of the conference commented on her blog saying:
Global Voices Online‘s own Alloush[ar] weighed in, expressing his disappointment and shock:
Not Green Data blog defends the decision to use English saying:
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.
Many others commented on the blog: some  like Ziad Nasser focused on the success, while others like Arabinator continued to criticize the shortcomings of Arabnet and listed dozens of tweets[ar] from people sharing his frustrations.
Mohamad Sahli goes beyond merely criticizing the conference for using English or ignoring the Maghreb countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, and Mauritania) and he announces plans of his own[ar]:
Despite the controversy over ArabNet 2010, many look forward toward ArabNet 2011 hoping that it would bring further innovation into the Arabic-speaking web and manage to overcome the issues that hampered its first iteration.