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Michael Speed Elder was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and knew early on that the traffic would have to go.  He attended college at Trinity University in San Antonio where he double-majored in Computer Science and Communication, before moving to Austin and finding developer paradise.

Over summer breaks in high school, Michael took internships at The Stehlin Foundation for Cancer Research and The Houston Museum of Natural Science before a brief stint at The Gimmal Group, where he discovered his passion for crafting the web.

Exploring life beyond the computer screen in college, he became involved with writing and acting for both stage and screen productions.  His theater performances include mainstage roles in The Madwoman of Chaillot and You Can't Take It With You as well as a black box original performance of Stephen Brown's Man Talk.  Michael worked closely with Trinity's student run TigerTV television station, contributing several packages to their weekly half hour comedy series The Not-So-Late Show, including “Snakes on a Campus”, “Saw 3D: The Early Years 2”, and “Dean Tuttle's Crush”.

Exploring life beyond the computer screen in college, he became involved with writing and acting for both stage and screen productions.  He could be seen in a few mainstage performances, as well as on the screen, working closely with Trinity's student run television station, TigerTV.  One of his best shorts from the half-hour variety show survives today: “Dean Tuttle's Crush”.

He was promoted to Web Manager of TigerTV's for two years, during which time he re-engineered the website to make all of the shows available online.  For his Capstone project in Communication, he helped create, produce and write the dramatic parody show Found (where this site originally gets it's name).  He hopes none of those tapes survive at all.

Currently, Michael is developing and maintaining the web assets of the Gotcha Media Group, an internet ad sales company, where he strives tirelessly to improve the working conditions of internet ads everywhere.  In the past, he has freelanced, served as a Teaching Assistant in Trinity's Computer Science department, edited textbooks on introductory programming logic, and contributed to Trinity's annual high school programming competition.  Michael loves that other people think what he does is “work;”  he has them all fooled.

Free time is typically filled with more delicious coding, watching reruns of House and Firefly, raiding the Republic fleet in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and friends (when human contact is unavoidable).  He enjoys writing paragraphs in the third person, and wonders if this is what nirvana feels like.

And yes, “Speed” really is his middle name.