Open 09 will be coming to Preston on November 16th and 17th, an open and participatory conference for the creative industries.

The event is aimed at designers, developers, musicians, artists, photographers, journalists, gamers, coders, strategists, information architects, fashion designers, user experience professionals and gallery curators – basically anyone in the creative industries.

The event will run over two days with sessions on media & journalism, games create, government 4 creatives, future of animation, product design futures, performance futures for for the love of fashion.

The sessions taking place will include Turtles, barcamps, mash-ups and relaxacons. These are all informal and creative sessions, rather than the traditional stand-up with a powerpoint and be talked at conference style sessions.

Open 09 will run across the city, with a lot of events based at the University of Central Lancashire, but the organisers are also looking for suggestions on small venues that will be available for all the spin off group sessions.

The Open 09 website states about the conference:

[It] is a facilitated, participant-driven event centred around creativity, innovation and its future. Once again, the medium becomes the message as Open 09 abandons many of the aspects of a conventional conference such as high fees and sponsored presentations, and replaces them with a more dynamic platform where creativity is evident in the form as well as the content.

The intention is to influence policy that affects all aspects of decision making in digital and creative areas through open dialogue. If you have an opinion make it visible through Open 09. If you can’t make it to the event, you can still participate before Open 09 by defining its themes and content.

Open 09 harnesses the power of backchannel social media by inviting those who use it to demonstrate its effectiveness through the creation, promotion and dissemination of a series of events which include seminars with world class speakers, master-classes, workshops and networking events. And in the true spirit of backchannel social media, the form and content of the sessions will be decided by the delegates.

In short, Open 09 is all about harnessing the potential power of digital social media apps for both communication and community building.

If you’d like to attend you can register via the Open 09 website, it’s free to attend.

The event is sponsored by North West Vision & Media, the BBC College of Journalism, Sandbox and T-Mobile.