This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on
Groupware (CRIWG 2003). The conference was held in the city of Autrans, on
the spectacular Vercors plateau in the foothills of the French Alps. The organizing
committee could not have thought of a better setting to inspire lively
discussions and reflection on open issues facing the field of groupware.
The CRIWG workshops have been motivated by advances in Computer-
Supported Cooperative Work, and by the need for CSCW to meet the challenges
of new application areas. With this ninth meeting, CRIWG aimed to provide a
forum for academic researchers and professionals to exchange their experiences
and ideas about problems and solutions related to the design, development, and
use of groupware applications.
The selection of papers followed a strict refereeing process by a renowned
international committee. We received 84 contributions with first authors from
21 different countries, from which 30 papers were selected to be presented and
published in this proceedings volume. The papers in these proceedings include
18 long papers presenting mature work and 12 short papers describing promising
work in progress in the field. We thank all members of the Program Committee
for their valuable reviews of the papers.
In addition, we were pleased to have as invited speaker Prof. Saul Greenberg
from the University of Calgary in Canada, a renowned specialist in Groupware
and HCI. An extended abstract of his lecture is included in these proceedings.
In putting together this conference, we had the pleasure of working with an
outstanding group of people. We thank them all for their hard work on behalf
of this conference. In particular we would like to thank Christine Ferraris, Sonia
Mendoza, Alberto L. Moran, and Irma Amaya.
We extend a special acknowledgment to our sponsoring organizations: the
C.N.R.S. (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), the I.M.A.G. (Institut
d’Informatique et de Math´ematiques Appliqu´ees de Grenoble), the Conseil
R´egional Rhˆone-Alpes, the Mairie de Grenoble, the Conseil G´en´eral de Savoie,
the I.N.P.G. (Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble), the Universit´e de
Savoie, and the U.J.F. (Universit´e Joseph Fourier, Grenoble), in France, and
CINVESTAV-IPN and CICESE in Mexico.
Last, but certainly not least, we thank you for your interest in CRIWG 2003,
and very much hope you found your experience at the conference to be enriching.
