I think HN overlaps a lot with what I imagine from OP's description. I personally would want more content along the lines of showing what random projects people are working on and far less focus on the companies that a particular VC firm happens to back.

> I personally would want more content along the lines of showing what random projects people are working on

YES. Anyone know of a good place for this?

hackaday is like this, but with an electronics focus rather than software

Lobste.rs does this occasionally, which can be interesting.

Yup, this is exactly what brings me to HN day after day.

I was thinking of meetup groups when writing that line. Some of them are practically adult show and tell.