Looking to join/make a group for people interested in projects with a little more "fuck it" involved.
Does anyone have more experience setting up or joining anything like that? (Groups that aren't professional networking, or some kind of career padding)
I feel like I get enough tech from my day job, but from what I've seen skimming through various group listings is the formula for tech meetups is some sort of set of presentations and discussion period afterwards scheduled regularly about once or twice a month. Providing information as to what's being presented entices people as they can decide "would this be interesting" prior to attending a group. Depending on how you treat such events it can be viewed as standard professional networking, but is that a bad thing? It sounds like you're interested in people working on side projects and exploring new ideas and those people are likely in or adjacent to your own profession any how.
If you're not interested in the in person aspect of things, there's loads of online communities out there for various niches, hobbies, projects, open source endeavors, etc. They're spread all over the place, from forums, to discord, to IRC, to in person makerspaces/hackerspaces, to all sorts of corners of the net. Either which way things will be hit or miss until you find an environment that meshes with your own goals.
No hate on more professional "networking" type events. I'm personally just not looking for more work after work and, at least for now, that's really only what's available on meetup.
I belonged to Pumping Station One in Chicago for a few years, it was a hoot!
I'm not a huge fan of renting equipment I can work through the tears to buy myself, but a couple classes might be cool
On the other hand, the community you meet more than makes up for the odd tool that's down.