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Sixteen Arab cities, including Doha, Beirut, Alexandria and Algiers, hosted Startup Weekend during November 2013, where developers, designers, marketers, product managers, and entrepreneurs meet to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups. But is it really working in the Arab world?

The independently organized no-talk all-action 54 hour event is held in more than 450 cities worldwide annually, and attended by tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. During the event, or the weekend, local entrepreneurs speak, and mentors guide the participating teams, before a panel of independent judges chooses the winning teams. The official website says that more than eight thousand startups graduated from Startup Weekends around the world since its inception in 2009 in Seattle.

Despite the political turmoil in the MENA region since 2011, the digital sector is advancing, and the Arabic is one of the fastest growing languages online. Keith Armstrong, who once was a Senior Operations Manager at Startup Weekend, has been always one of the most enthusiastic people about the region, as he wrote once on ArabNet linking the political heat and the nourishment of entrepreneurship in the MENA region, and preaching for the inclusion of “Startup Weekend” mentality in the education for the good of the regional entrepreneurship.

However the low turnout of Beirut Startup Weekend 2013, that took place between 22 and 24 November, raised some questions about the ability of the event to sustain its progress. The replication of the event in a small radius can be one of the reasons, as two events took place in the same month in Mount Lebanon and Byblos, not too far away from Beirut. In Egypt, at least six Startup Weekends take place annually.

“Expensive tickets prevented many people from showing up”, said Dani Arnaout, a developer and mentor at Startup Weekend Beirut. Ticket prices range from $75 to $150, however there’re prizes worth thousands of dollars at the end for the winning teams.

One can argue that the whole experience depends mainly on the local market and the participants rather than the event format itself. Ramallah Startup Weekend 2013, a part of the Global Startup Battle, was a success, according to Wamda.

"The Lebanese market is small, and it apparently reached the saturation point", Abdallah Absi, CEO of Zoomal and the organizer of the Startup Weekend Beirut 2013, told ArabNet. “Startup Weekend isn't necessarily the ideal event for the local market here”, he added.

Absi is considering organizing an exclusive invitation-only event for “established” entrepreneurs for the purpose of networking, while not being obliged to “commit” for three successive days.