I am a big fan of the show Ugly Betty. In the last episode Betty is given tips on networking at a club.

Steps
1. Forge your bond. Your name, where you work and one memorable fact.
2. Gathering information. In order to get info you're going to have to give info. Trick is to make it sound juicy but really mean nothing.
3. Exit Strategy. Get in. Get info. Get out.

Fortunately for me, this episode aired the day before the 2008 Crunchies Award Ceremony in San Francisco, which is considered the Academy Awards for internet technologies.

My goal was to meet some of the top players in the industry and the first person on my list was Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Product and User Experience. I'll admit I was nervous. She was there with her fiance talking with another bloke. I tried not to seem like i was hovering, glancing occasionally to see if she would look over to invite me over. After 5 minutes, which seemed alot longer my friend went up to her and told her that i wanted to talk with her. I was pissed. I'm CTO of a company, went to MIT, served in the Air Force and yet my friend and I were acting like high school buddies. Anyway, it popped into my head what she and i had in common which is virtual worlds. I introduced myself and asked her why they had shut their LIVELY virtual world down. She told me it was a combination of things including porn. I told her we try to mitigate the porn in the chat rooms thru whitelisting, etc. I asked her if i could talk to the lead developer and she stated Niniane Wang was no longer with Google. Marissa then gave me her business card and asked me to email her for Niniane's contact info. With that we shook hands and parted.

The second person on my list was Mark Zuckerburg, the ceo of Facebook. There he was, surrounded by several people that wanted to talk with him. Feeling empowered by Marissa, I nudged my way into the crowd and just as i was about to introduce myself an elder gentleman with einstein hair grabbed him for a conversation. I waited another 5 minutes before Mark turned towards me and i blurted out "You ever hire MIT people?". His eyes got big and he looked intrigued. I said I was just kidding and gave him my card. I asked him if there was any interest in his part about developing virtual worlds and he said no. But that we should consider building our own on top of his platform. He then said it was nice meeting me and we shook hands. I was so awestruck i forgot to ask for his card.

Third person on my list was Evan Williams, founder of Blogger & Twitter. I looked for him but couldn't find him. After meeting some more folks, my friend and i decided to leave the venue. As we were walking I saw Evan and I approached him stating it was an honor to meet him and thanked him for twitter. I gave him my card and we briefly discussed how we can incorporate twitter into our virtual worlds. He didn't give me a card but shook my hand.

Marissa, Mark and Evan were so nice and approachable, which really capped the awesome evening nicely!