Mike’s Blog

I’m now certain more than ever that Parkglobe are the company to drive Cix conferencing to the wall. Despite many users advising them gently and in some cases very firmly that they need to concentrate on conferencing and in particular the userbase as their main activity, they seem to have spent the majority of their time developing Cix Office. This seems to be a product that virtually nobody apart from Parkglobe themselves have any interest in. I’ve shown it to a few clients and they remain singulary unimpressed.

Meanwhile whilst all this effort has been expended, Ameol (The off line reader for Cix) has limped along with poorly managed software development. The most recent cock up resulting in several users users losing historical data.

The web interface developed in the early days still performs like a dog with three legs and only now, 5 years on is a new version starting development.

Parkglobe have however launched some initiatives to try and turn things around. They are organising a round of meet ups around the country where they pick up the bar and food tab in an attempt to re-energise the userbase. One wag described it as pissing away the marketing budget.

They have introduced an offer for existing users to add an additional 4 accounts. So far from the figures that one Cix users keeps a tally of, this has not been a roaring success. I shall not even begin to describe a disaster the web interface for that was other than to say it was yet another demonstration of just how poor the controls and managment of development are within Parkglobe.

This all seems too little too late. Many offers of free expert advice have been turned away by Parkglobe, users who are experts in their fields have been ignored, anyone who dares to raise a voice against Parkglobe’s managment is now likely to be expelled from the conferences. Its like they have closed their eyes, stuck their fingers in their ears and are quietly humming “la la la”.

I believe they will milk the cash cow that is Cix conferencing until it is a dry hollow sack and walk away from it. It’s something I hope doesn’t happen as I’ve enjoyed my time on Cix and it’s been a great resource of information, help and advice, but unfortunately it looks like the end is in sight and reading http://cixblog.blogspot.com/ suggests I’m not the only one.