San Diego AI Showcase #8 (North County) September 2026 (Main theme: Launch)
Tuesday, September 1, 2026, 6:00 PM PDT – 8:30 PM PDT
LVLUP USA · 1410 Vantage Ct, Vista, CA 92081, USA
Hosted by Pactto
Note: we are charging $10 just to help with food and drinks, we already have an awesome space. If you don't feel like paying, please choose the INVITEE ticket (free). Thanks! San Diego AI Showcase (North County) A Homebrew-style night for AI experiments and demos. Just sharing and learning. This is a monthly, in-person gathering for San Diego founders who are actively building with AI, and who are willing to show their work before it’s perfect. Inspired by the original Homebrew Computer Club, where builders like Steve Wozniak casually shared what they were experimenting with, this is a space for real demos, early prototypes, bold ideas, and honest lessons. No polished pitch decks. No sales. No pressure. This is about learning in public, helping each other think sharper, and accelerating progress through thoughtful feedback. The San Diego AI Showcase is designed to grow a tight, curious, builder-driven founder community in the region. What you’ll see • Early AI products, tools, agents, workflows, and experiments • Things that are half-working, just launched, or still a little rough • Lessons from what didn’t work (often the most valuable part) • Live demos, screen shares, short walkthroughs Format • 5–10 founders present for 10 minutes each • 3-minute Q&A and group discussion after every presentation • Hang out, meet other builders, and keep the conversation going Who this is for • Founders actively building with AI (pre-seed to growth) • Engineers, designers, and product leaders experimenting hands-on • People who value curiosity, humility, and substance over hype What this is not • Not a pitch night • Not an investor demo day • Not a sales event Just builders helping builders. 📍 Event Details When: September 1 (Tuesday), 2026, from 6 pm to 8:30 pm Where: LVLUP USA - 1410 Vantage Ct, Vista, CA 92081 Organizer: Demian Borba, Founder and CEO of Pactto (Stanford StartX S25, ex-Adobe, Intuit, PayPal, BlackBerry) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/demianborba/ If you’re interested in presenting, attending, or shaping the future of this meetup, please email Demian at demian@pactto.com. The goal is to create something long-lasting for San Diego — a place where meaningful work gets shared early, and momentum compounds over time. Presenters: 6:30 pm Demian Borba, Founder and CEO of Pactto (Stanford StartX S25, ex-Adobe, Intuit, PayPal, BlackBerry) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/demianborba/ Title: Launching Pactto Details: After 2 years of intense work, the public version of Pactto is ready. Let's see what it is, what it does, and how agencies, creators, coaches, architects, tutors, and so many other personas use the product to meet, review and ship projects. ----------------------------- 6:45 pm Raul Pegan, Co-Founder & CTO of Qbox-ai.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raulpegan/ Title: Build Human Connections at scale with AI Details: Raul will share the latest updates on Qbox AI, how they got from building customer profiles to targeted outbound, automatically. ----------------------------- 7 pm Brandon Garate, Prev Cloud Engineer at EchoStar, CS at SDSU, Colorstack at SDSU LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandongarate177/ Title: Why your coding agent gets worse as the project grows Details: Coding agents are great until the repo gets heavy and they start reinventing stuff you already have. VibeDrift tries to catch that locally, via MCP so the agent can check before it writes. I’ll demo what we have, be honest about what we're still fixing, and ask this room what would actually make engineers keep it on. ----------------------------- 7:15 pm Britt Midgette, AI Native Global Design Leader LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/britt-midgette-24949b3/ Title: Meet DropQ — Turning Any QR Code into a Pop-Up Store Details: DropQ is a commerce platform built for local vendors, food makers, farm stands, and pop-up sellers. Vendors can create scheduled product drops, accept preorders, and turn a single QR code into a live, mobile storefront—without requiring customers to download an app. They’re currently testing the platform with real San Diego vendors and using AI throughout the design, development, and operational process. They'd love feedback from other AI founders on the product, business model, and where you see the biggest opportunities. ----------------------------- 7:30 pm Maxwell Moon, Sr. Engineering Manager at Shield AI (ex-AWS, Gruntwork, Trust & Will) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwelljmoon/ Title: Perpetual Memory with Context Structured Merge Details: LLMs need memory systems that can automatically retain and recall memories from any session. Context structured merge is a memory harness for agents to automatically detect shifts in conversation to create a tiered temporal memory system. ----------------------------- 7:45 pm Sonia Sarao, Freedom With AI Advisory LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonia-sarao/ Title: SenBuddy, PoC simulation…