Oh... I know you know the feeling - your at a party or mixer, and there's a room full of people and you don't know any of them.
The other night I attended just such an event. In this case it was for musical theatre, but it might have been for anything. It was a room full of people I didn't know.
I had a great time and in two hours I met at least ten new people some of whom I'll be seeing in the coming weeks.
So how did I do it?
Step 1. I walked up and said "Hello, my name is Bob. Who are you?" If I could read their name tag, I might have even said, "Hi Jessica, My name is Bob."
Step 2. I repeated step one over and over with each new person until the end of the event.
That's it. That's how I did it. That's the secret. Period.
Really. That's the key.
Now there are some nuances of course.
For instance, I was genuinely interested in meeting the people I walked up to. I was actually curious about what they did. I listened. I learned a lot. I shared some things about myself. I exchanged contact information with people I was interested in meeting again.
But really the key was, I simply walked up and said Hi.
Understand this, everyone in the room was there to meet other people. And everyone had some level of shyness about being in a room of unknown people. So you could stand fidgeting with your phone... or put the phone away and walk up and say "Hi!"
That person you introduce yourself to just might change you life or you might change theirs.