From my own experience: It may seem crazy, but try this.
Climb down your geek tower and stop judging people (you may be judging people without even knowing it), then will come respect for people.
When you respect anyone around, you will gradually find interest in them; That will help break the ice, conversation will come easy and you’ll found out that people are much interesting than you think.
I couldn't agree more. During Y Combinator, there were two guys sitting behind me. They said something along the lines of "Not to be sterotypical but I am suspicious of any girls here. They're probably just project managers and not really hackers."
Not a very "social" tactical move to do when there were about two girls around the area who heard his comment and some hackers wonder why girls don't talk to them.
And, of course, they were wrong (and had they actually talked to some of the girls, they would have known that). I met one young woman who is a CompSci major and has built and sold a Facebook app. I'd give good odds that she'll out-hack and out-earn those two fellows by an order of magnitude in her lifetime. It's a small sample size, and I didn't meet any other women that I didn't previously know from YC, but 100% of the women (er, woman) I met at Startup School were hackers.
Climb down your geek tower and stop judging people (you may be judging people without even knowing it), then will come respect for people.
When you respect anyone around, you will gradually find interest in them; That will help break the ice, conversation will come easy and you’ll found out that people are much interesting than you think.