Have people read Darius’s thing about this?
Yes! It's a hugely inspiring read. It almost made me spin up my own Mastodon instance but... ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Darius' Mastodon posts about making his own fork of the code and running it are inspiring. I take it you're following those, too?
Tilde IRC could fit the bill for us…
This seems to be a popular choice. Not another Slack, please. An RSS aggregator of tilde activity (mentioned elsewhere, I believe) would/will also help a community feel.
Email lists are nice, though, because they move a little slower. I appreciate that when life/work/projects intrude.