8th SD Hardware Meetup @ Downtown Works Mission Valley | Hardware for Defense
Thursday, February 26, 2026, 5:00 PM PST – 7:30 PM PST
Downtown Works - Coworking Office Space Mission Valley · 3517 Camino del Rio S Suite 215, San Diego, CA 92108, USA
Hosted by Nadim Abdel Meguid
We're back for another Hardware Meetup! This month we're meeting at Downtown Works - Mission Valley! Downtown Works is San Diego's premier co-working experience designed to fuel your startup & entrepreneurial ventures. Check them out here. Hardware Meetups happen across over 50 cities around the world every month, helping bring together founders, engineers, and other hardware professionals to networks, share insights, and collaborate with each other. Our guest speakers Tom Cotton is leading a small product team at Motive Labs (start-up of <10) translating biomechanics research into passive exoskeleton footwear for defense and medical applications, with plans to break into consumer athletics. He coordinates design, prototyping, and manufacturing between in-house teams and international partners to deliver grant-funded innovations. His approach centers on building products collaboratively with end-users, using participant interviews and field research to balance biomechanical performance with real-world manufacturability. When not building shoes or boots, Tom enjoys running, hiking, and golfing around San Diego. Clayton Karmel, founder of Dronekyll, launched the company about a year ago after researching how to give soldiers an effective defense against small drones, then assembled the team to bring the solution to life. A veteran electronics entrepreneur and product builder, he previously ran a successful consulting firm for 26 years delivering everything from bicycle lights and irrigation/moisture controls to heart and muscle monitors, wireless routers, and other commercial devices, and earlier led RF and defense programs at Watkins-Johnson and helped build National Semiconductor’s wireless business line, developing high-performance PLL chips up to 2GHz that achieved major market share across GSM and CDMA. Karmel holds 27 U.S. patents (with three additional Dronekyll applications in process) and earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Santa Clara University; outside of work he wing-foils, races ILCA/Laser dinghies in Mission Bay, and backcountry skis the Eastern Sierra, and he has lived in California since 1979 (San Diego since 1996). Ryan Roberts, CEO of QHR, leads development of mission-critical comms for high-noise environments. QHR blends Qualcomm-enabled hybrid noise control, ML voice detection, and multi-modal connectivity for defense, aviation, and eVTOL teams, refining performance through field-driven iteration with operators and manufacturers. Its headsets also capture and route what users hear to radios, networks, or cameras for recording and review. Agenda 5:00-5:30 - Arrival, mingle, grab refreshments 5:30-6:30 - Welcome and Introductions 6:30-7:30 - Mix, mingle, and close out the night Thank you to our partners informal is a freelance collective for the most talented independent professionals in hardware and hardtech. If you want to help support the next meetup, please reach out to nate@informal.cc & nadimameguid@gmail.com for sponsorship/logistics inquiries.