Kubify
WRITING ON THE WALL
Written by Stuart Wood
Event tech start-up Kubify is
sounding the death knell for
paper poster sessions, and helping
academic events spread their legacy
beyond the conference halls
10
AS WE HEARD on pages 8-9 of this issue,
many academic and association conferences
struggle with sharing information.
It can be difficult to make cutting-edge
research tangible for delegates, and to
distribute it in an accessible manner. The
age-old solution to information exchange
at academic conferences has been the
‘poster session’, where large printouts
of new research are displayed in open
rooms holding seminar discussions. But
this solution can be unwieldy, not to
mention expensive, and is not conducive to
continuing the debate once the event is over.
Enter Kubify - an event tech company
which is solving this problem with electronic
posters. Kubify’s Learning Toolbox creates
a small, printed mini-poster, containing
a teaser of the content and a QR code.
Delegates can scan this QR code and access
a suite of interactive material that includes
video, audio, presentations, weblinks, social
media feeds, quizzes and more.
The company was set up in 2018, after
co-founders Tamsin Treasure-Jones and
Raymond Elferink had spent many years
in the same academic circles. The pair
often discussed the problems they had
sharing their research, and decided to set
up Kubify after trialling an early version of
the Learning Toolbox at the Association for
Medical Education conference in Helsinki.
Treasure-Jones says: “Paper posters at
conferences are a poor way for researchers
to present their work. The content is limited
to text and graphs, they are expensive to
produce and transport, and they do not
“Paper posters
at conferences
are a poor way
for researchers
to present
their work.
The content is
limited, they
are expensive
and they do not
provide ongoing
engagement.”
provide ongoing engagement with the
community.
“Most paper posters will be packed up
into their tube after the conference and
will never see the light of day again. For
organisers, these paper poster sessions
are a logistical nightmare that need a lot of
expensive space. For many venues, it means
they cannot host conferences with large
poster sessions, simply because of space
limitations.”
The aim of the technology is to facilitate
discussions happening at academic
conferences, and extend the legacy of an
event beyond its duration. Kubify’s Learning
Toolbox can be accessed before, during and
www.aenetwork.co.uk
after an event, and delegates are able to
leave comments on all content, as well as
co-author it.
Treasure-Jones continues: “Authors can
easily continue to share their own work
with others after the conference. This
rich repository lets viewers search and
explore e-posters from all the years that the
conference has used Learning Toolbox.”
A digital, open platform provides one
solution to the problem of legacy for
academic and association events. The ability
to easily share information across social
media and beyond could allow it to become
the mouthpiece for the world’s next major
research breakthrough.