About
Michael Speed Elder was born in Houston, TX in 1986, and has lived there most of his life. He attended Trinity University in San Antonio for his undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Communication. During the summers between high school years, Michael was active with internships at The Stehlin Foundation for Cancer Research and The Houston Museum of Natural Science before a brief stint at Freesprung Media, a web development division of the Gimmal Group, where he discovered his talent for crafting the web.
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 for 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”.
He became manager of TigerTV's web content for two years, during which time he updated the site 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. He is also fond of making appearances with the student sketch comedy group First Time Offenders.
Currently, Michael works as a freelance web developer, with ongoing projects in several states. Occasionally, he has the opportunity to TA at Trinity University, edit textbooks on introductory programming logic, and work on building a production troupe to regularly create short radio or film projects for online distribution.
Free time is typically filled by television, writing, World of Warcraft, sleep (when absolutely necessary) and the increasingly infrequent D&D session – although he considers it a life goal to play with the Penny Arcade group, even once. He enjoys writing paragraphs in the third person, and wonders if this is what nirvana feels like.