The first Social Media Week Ireland kicks off today, with a social media conference, an awards show, social media clinics and other events taking place throughout the country all week.

A digital and social media conference will take place in Liberty Hall tomorrow, as part of the week-long series of events. Speakers at the conference include DoneDeal community manager Donna Spellacy, Maximum Media managing director Katie Molony, Eventbrite marketing manager Ann Lowney, Lidl Ireland head of communications Aoife Clarke and Rena Kennedy, press officer with the Irish Defence Forces. The Sockies social media awards take place in the RDS Concert Hall on Wednesday, with up to 700 people expected to attend. More than 200 companies and organisations entered their work into the competition.

Social Media Week organiser Damien Mulley said: "In terms of usage, Ireland has been a trailblazer on social media, adopting Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and now Snapchat with great speed so it started to make sense to run a week-long celebration of social media and to run events that gave back to people by having people share their knowledge with others."

Separately, Tech Connect Live is taking place in the RDS on Wednesday, with more than 3,000 entrepreneurs, investors and media expected to attend. CoderDojo co-founder Bill Liao, SurveyMonkey managing director (EMEA) Luis Franco, PayPal vice-president for global operations (EMA) Louise Phelan, Fire Financial Services chief executive Colm Lyon, and Broadlake Capital head of new investments Kevin McSweeney are among the speakers.

The conference will focus on all areas of technology including big data, the internet of things, cleantech, fintech, software and gaming.