Preface

CollabTech 2017, the 9th International Conference on Collaboration Technologies, offered a unique forum for academics and practitioners to present and discuss innovative ideas, methods, or implementations related to collaboration technologies, which are greatly needed for various everyday collaboration activities due to recent advances in networking, computing, and interaction technologies. The previous CollabTech conferences were held in Tokyo in 2005, Tsukuba in 2006, Seoul in 2007, Wakayama in 2008, Sydney in 2009, Sapporo in 2012, Santiago in 2014, and Kanazawa in 2016. Following the success of the joint organization with CRIWG 2014 and CRIWG 2016, CollabTech 2017 was co-located and organized with CRIWG 2017 again, but this time in Saskatoon, Canada. The CRIWG and CollabTech communities had similar research topics and goals, but had been geographically located in different regions. We believed this joint endeavor would provide an interesting opportunity to meet each other. The success of the conference was largely due to the program co-chairs, the conference committee members, and the reviewers, whose efforts made the conference possible. The success was also due to University of Saskatchewan, the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ), the SIG on Groupware and Network Services of IPSJ, the SIG on Cyberspace of the Virtual Reality Society of Japan, and the SIG on Communication Enhancement of the Human Interface Society. We are pleased that the conference was fruitful for all participants and played an important role in cultivating the community in this research field.