Profile
Bangkok Video Productions Founder|
Chairman, Board Of Directors
Shayne L. van Vlerken

Shayne L. van Vlerken
Born in New Zealand. After serving in the Royal New Zealand Army Mr. van Vlerken first travelled to Australia and then to Asia living in Singapore and then Taiwan before settling in Thailand.

Alphamax Corporation
Mr. van Vlerken cut his teeth in business in Asia as a Director of Alphamax Corporation Chaired by Vice Admiral Watanapol Saneewong Na Ayudhaya. (Royal Title) Mr. van Vlerken bought Australian Cellulose technology to Thailand under Cellumax Co Ltd. Establishing a Cellulose Manufacturing Plant which was awarded ISO 14001.

Mr. van Vlerken as a Director of Alphamax was also actively engaged within the Shipping industry as Vessel Owners, building a fleet of Reefers Vessels and another fleet of Oil Tankers under Rama Shipping Co., Ltd. and Alpha Petroleum Transport Co. Ltd. which was the first Thai shipping company to achieve ISM. Alpha Marine Co Ltd managed one of the World’s largest ULCC’s (Ultra Large Crude Carrier) “MV Wyoming” of 340,000 DWT which was stationed in Thailand as floating oil storage. 

When the Thai Navy needed an Aircraft Carrier Alphamax became the agent for BAZAN of Spain, Europe’s largest Military ship builder. Alphamax has a 40 year maintenance agreement for the Carrier with the Royal Thai Navy. 

Alphamax was also active as a property developer.

EthnicEarth.com
During the mid 90's Mr. van Vlerken resigned as an active Director of Alphamax, maintaining a position as “Adviser to The Board of Directors” so he could establish EthnicEarth Holdings Co., Ltd (EE) An Internet pioneering company offering technical expertise and Web Services. EE was a major local pioneer bringing World standards of Internet connections, Internet protocols and internet services, website development and website marketing services to Thailand.

This was achieved by understanding from the outset that to be a professional Internet company of global standing, one needed three separate teams; 

1. Professional Software Programmers, 

2. Talented Graphic Designers

3. Professional Copywriters

This was at a time when most Web companies’ worldwide still had “WebMasters” who were programmers that were trying to do everything. The decision to establish three divisions in the company along with the policy to hire only the very best from the USA, Europe and Thailand quickly propelled EE to become the leader in Web Services in Thailand.

The same time as pioneering local Web Services Mr. van Vlerken established Ethnic Earth Internet Advertising Agency (latter to become Digital Media Marketing) to bring Digital Marketing opportunities to Thai businesses. The fact that Mr. van Vlerken’s background is not in IT has allowed him to approach the technology industry from a business perspective which worked well with customers who much rather talk business processes than the latest techno-gizmo.

After more than two decades in the technology industry Mr. van Vlerken has a solid understanding of the industry, the technologies and how to complete client projects on-time, within-budget and to the highest standards of excellence.

Ethnic Earth Highlights.

• EE developed Thailand’s first Online Securities Trading Platform for Capitol Nomura Securities. EE developed Thailand’s first Online Asset Management Trading Platform for Thai Military Bank. EE went on to develop many more banking platforms for Thailand's financial system.
  
  

• EE is selected by Sun Microsystems to become their Strategic Alliance Partner in SE Asia for JAVA programming. The alliance brings to EE professional IT training for EE Management and technical staff training, to SUN Microsystems standards. When SUN needs JAVA programmers across the South East Asia region it is up to EE to provide professionals up to SUN’s high standards.
  
  

• EE established AsianInsider, a multi-award winning financial services portal to demonstrate to the Thai Banking sector what they can do online. AaianInsider had 41 Finance Professors, including the Financial Advisor to the Prime Minister as regular columnists. AI covered stocks, bonds, forex as well as daily NAV’s from most of Thailand’s securities companies. AI was the only Asian website to have a live Reuters feed transmitting the 2000 Olympics from Australia in English and Thai languages. AI was eventually sold to an EE client.
  
  

• EE established Shopee.com , an ecommerce portal to demonstrate to the Thai retail industry the opportunities of ecommerce. At the time Shopee became one of the largest ecommerce portal in Asia. Several of the major Shopping centers (World Trade Centre, Seacon Square & MBK) went online as Shopee clients with shops in each Center being put online & run by EE staff. Also Thailand’s world renowned Market Chatchuchak (Jatuchak) with more than 15,000 shops which joined up & EE staff put them each online spending month’s taking photos of each shops goods. Shopee also had a database of 1,500 ecommerce shops from 14 Asian countries. Shopee was sold to the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority and then sold on. (The name Shopee is from Shop Ethnic Earth)

• EE signs agreement with Samitejiv Hospital Group to provide Electronic Health Care Development services & to digitize the hospitals manual Administration services using the latest technologies.
  
  

• EE established EasyShopee, An online supermarket to demonstrate this style of ecommerce opportunity. This was quickly sold to a local client.
  
  

• EE Internet Advertising Agency becomes the Asian Internet Advertising Agency of choice for Yahoo, BMG Australia, Saatchi & Saatchi and several other International Advertising Agencies along with contracts ranging right across the Asian region.
  
  

• EEIAA launches its EMercial technology. This is real TV in your Email using special compression and delivered from a streaming server. EMercials play instantly bringing a whole new level in Internet Advertising. (Not so amazing now -but back then it was groundbreaking).
  
  

• EE gains a new shareholder as IEC, a premier Thai Telecommunications & Infrastructure Company founded by The Thai Royal Family acquires an equity stake in EE. IEC brings to EE their close association with Thai Government and Thai Industry.

• EE boasts over 100 Employees and is the largest Web Services Company in Thailand. To Celebrate EE rewards its staff with Webgames 2000.
  
  

• EE purchases an Equity stake in London based Software company Integral Web bringing to EE a range of ERP solutions including Web Content Management, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, Sales Order Processing and ecommerce solutions.
  
  

• Quoin Public Company Limited, One of Australia’s largest IT companies selects EE as their outsourcing partner as a means of managing escalating programming costs. EE Professional Services provides programming and Graphic Design services to Quoin completing many projects for Australian businesses and Government sectors.
  
  

• EE becomes the company of choice to develop many of the Thai Government’s Web Services including the Customs Department EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) & Web services for The Ministry of Finance, Tourism, Agriculture, Education and several other Departments.
  
  

• EE provides outsourcing services to the US Department of Energy supporting their African division which fosters US Government and US companies partnering with African Nations.

Mr van Vlerken sold his interests in Ethnic Earth Holdings Co., Ltd in 2003 

Just a few Newpaper clippings from the time - that I managed to find.

2003 Quoin Technology.

Mr. van Vlerken was requested by the Directors of the publically listed company Quoin Technologies PLC to come to Australia to take over as CEO as Quoin had run into financial difficulty as the Dot.com bubble burst, due to some rather unfortunate investment decisions that forced Quoin to close. Quoin had been successfully sending outsourced contracts to Thailand and during the period of closure Mr. van Vlerken took up the position as temporary CEO taking over existing Quoin contracts including ANZ Bank, Westfield Shopping Group, Price Waterhouse Coopers (IBM Global) NZ Government LINZ project. These projects were completed and delivered to the clients.

2004 Neurom Pty Ltd. (Australia) Mhelp Pty Ltd. (Australia)
During 2004 Mr. van Vlerken formed Neurom Technology, putting together an Australian team of developers to create software IP. After some initial R&D efforts a realization grew that whilst there were a great many groups making revolutionary new software there was not a single company concentrating on revolutionizing how we effectively acquire all the knowledge needed to fully use all the features of new software offerings. With this in mind all efforts went towards two years of academic and scientific research into “how humans acquire new knowledge and skills”. Thousands of published papers were analysed and a selection of these papers formed the foundation of the “Science of Mhelp”. Thus Mhelp was born as our IP vehicle. The founding principle of Mhelp is highly focused: we have set out to revolutionize how to present knowledge relevant to the 21st century worker to mist effectively acquire new skills.

• Follow the “Elaboration Theory” of delivering information (see diagram). 

• Slice learning & help information into brief “bits” of information.

• Embed the learning & help information inside the host software.

• Make it easy & quick to find the precise information you need whenever you need it. 

• Deliver the information in the most comprehensible format using animation, audio & texts.

• Ensure consistency through stringent quality standards:
  
  Standards = Consistency
  Consistency = Familiarity
  Familiarity = User Acceptance, Usability & Comprehension.

Mhelp R&D Centre of Excellence (Thailand) (A wholly owned subsidiary of Mhelp PL)

Established in 2005, the Mhelp R&D Centre in Thailand is a technology development and content production centre. Mhelp selected Thailand due to the Founder’s previous experience of Thailand and confidence that Thailand would offer the best value location, now and into the future for recruiting and training highly skilled technology and content development teams. Mhelp has state of the art technology development hardware and software as well as professional technical writing, animation, sound recording and video recording studios.

Mhelp IT (Australia) (A wholly owned subsidiary of Mhelp PL)

Our Head Office for Sales and Marketing Operations was seeded during 2005 but became fully operational in late 2008. During the seeding phase we formed close relationships with sectors of the Government and Corporate marketplaces to ensure that we became a “market driven” company. We also formed relationships within the technology sector to ensure we could deploy the very latest relevant technologies within Mhelp.

In January 2009 Mhelp ICT occupied our new Corporate Headquarters located on the Ground Floor of 299 Sussex Street in the Centre of Sydney.

Mhelp was sold in 2010

Bangkok Video Productions Co., Ltd.
Started in 2010 and gaining experiences in 2011. The rest of the story is within our client portfolio.

http://www.bangkokvideoproductions.com/Portfolio

I am proud to say that we have undertaken the video recording of Royal Command Performances, National ballet's and other Major performances. We have worked with the world's major music stars and with many significant American, European, Australian and Mid Eastern film production companies. Too many to list and among them the major names.

We have won Multiple awards.

What have I learned over my career in Thailand?

1. Nothing is more important than your family - Nothing!

2. Do the job you love - Find your passion and follow that passion. 

3. If you love what you do - You will be good at your job and Money will  follow

4. No good company was built in a day. Stick at your dream. Never give up.

Shayne, Henry, Jenny, Apple - My amazing family.

Update: March 2023. Alt tags added