@ernmander in my experience it's just a question of engaging in conversations like these - we also have some fun chats in our Discord (for Patreon donors) on some community topics - I also look at the Lemmy groups that talk about Mastodon, and browse what folks are building via Codeberg etc.
If you have a fediverse account, you can quote this note from your own instance. Search https://macaw.social/users/andypiper/statuses/114195860554523121 on your instance and quote it. (Note that quoting is not supported in Mastodon.)