Celebrating the World's First Social Media Day

I waited until one minute after midnight to post this blog and to shout: "Happy Social Media Day, Wednesday, June 30!"

It's the first global Social Media Day. Followed only by New York City, a gathering in Orange County, Calif. is expected to be the second largest in the U.S. and the fifth largest in the world.

The unique effort by the social media and blogging website Mashable has helped organize approximately 450 "meet-ups" or "tweet-ups" in 74 countries to celebrate the new social world we all now live and work in.

Approximately 300 people are expected to converge upon the Orange County Register's headquarters along with some of Southern California's foremost social media experts who are speaking at 625 N. Grand Ave. in Santa Ana, Calif. from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. (Pacific time)

Speakers and participants include Rochelle Veturis, Jonathan Lansner, Kevin Sablan, Kristin Slocum (who appear in this iReport) as well as Nancy Luna, Dustin Luther, Robert Watson, Morgan Brown, Bryan Elliott, Jim Marks and others. See this link for the full schedule of the afternoon's activities. 

And check out this audioBoo interview of some of the participants sharing a preview of the special opportunity to cultivate new tools and friendships as well as enjoy some great grub. 

Thanks to Nancy Luna of the wildly popular Fast Food Maven blog, Twitter- fueled mobile trucks are serving food in the front lot for the first-of-its-kind gathering of social geeks -- Taco Dawg, Piaggio On Wheels, Calbi, Oh For Sweets Sake and Tropical Shave Ice.

Participants are using the hashtag of #SMdayOC to keep track of the live tweets for the social media event.

Happy Social Media Day -- June 30! But we have a feeling that every day is social media day because these high-tech tools are now integrated into our daily personal and work lives.