The new Lord Mayor of Dublin Andrew Montague will this morning sign a mayoral scroll proclaiming Social Media Day tomorrow, 30 June. It is a fitting honour for Dublin – Europe’s internet capital – which is home to the European headquarters of Facebook, Zynga, Google, LinkedIn and many others.
Social media news site Mashable.com kick started the event last year, and celebrations around the world connected thousands of people face-to-face in their communities.
The signing of the proclamation will happen today at 10.30am in Dublin City.
The decision by Dublin’s Lord Mayor to declare tomorrow Social Media Day in Dublin coincides with a similar decision by Dublin’s sister city, San Jose in California – in the heart of Silicon Valley – to become the first city in the United States to proclaim 30 June Social Media Day.
Both San Jose and Dublin will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of their status as sister cities this year.
The common thread joining these proclamations is the involvement of the Irish Technology Leaders Group (ITLG), a high-powered group of 2,000 technology executives across the States and around the world.
“Because San Jose and Dublin are sister cities and this is their 25th year, we will be working with them a lot during this year to facilitate events like this,” ITLG head of operations Cian Hughes explained.
The ITLG and the City of San Jose will co-host a panel discussion tomorrow at 4pm California time (12am GMT) at the Irish Innovation Center in San Jose.
This will be followed by a panel discussion chaired by venture capitalist Richard Moran that will include panellists Fergus Hurley, founder of Focal Labs and Clixtr, and Charles J Orlando, a screenwriter and Facebook celebrity with almost 500,000 fans.
Gateway to Silicon Valley
ITLG chairman John Hartnett was in Ireland this week, where he attended the opening of Limerick Institute of Technology’s enterprise centre at Moylish as the Hartnett Enterprise Acceleration Centre. The alliance will facilitate access for companies on LIT’s LEAP programme to potential seed funding from the Wilde Angels Fund established by Hartnett, as well as assist with the commercialisation of research conducted at the Hartnett Enterprise Acceleration Centre.
“The alliance will create a gateway to Silicon Valley, where over 40pc of all US venture capital is invested each year. In 2010, this was almost $8bn,” Hartnett said.
Based on the viral success of the inaugural event last year, the number of Social Media Day participants is expected increase this year at live meetups and through tweets, photos, live streams and videos.
Mashable will be holding a meetup at the Grand Canal Theatre in Dublin at 7pm on Thursday 30 June.
Murphy’s Ice Cream at Temple Bar Square to celebrate Social Media Day will offer a 2-1 deal on icre creams from 1pm to 2pm. The codeword is ‘popsicle’ for anyone coming along.
Please let us know if any other meetups, tweetups, mashups and other social media activities are planned for tomorrow
Pictured above: Dublin’s new Lord Mayor Andrew Montague signing the Social Media Day proclamation with ITLG chairman John Hartnett standing by
Photo below: San Jose’s proclamation that 30 June will be Social Media Day henceforth. It is the first city in the US to make the proclamation, and this morning Dublin, San Jose’s sister city for 25 years now, will see a similar proclamation
