I love visiting coffee shops, but I like to connect with people who have the following attributes:
1. Motivated and building something 2. Isn't full of excuses or highly negative 3. Works on making progress daily
I'm in a very good group with some of the best engineers I've met in the field. But it comes at a cost of having to hold an engineering job.
Back when I was freelancing, I'd hang around people who were actually making good money off it. But after no longer freelancing, that group also mysteriously died down.
If you want to meet people who are committed, you have to commit to something.
If you're looking online, Hackaday (https://hackaday.com/) has an excellent variety of people working on DIY projects.
Someone recently started a Hacker News Learns discourse group which you might be interested in joining: https://discord.gg/WyRBDGgeCG
There seem to be several highly motivated people there working on various interesting projects. You might find some other interesting ideas in this thread as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32354994