was watching this part in Kevin Rose's podcast episode with Charles Duhigg where he talks about how to gracefully end conversations.

Say something along the lines of,

I totally apologize, I have to go talk to my friend / head to the bathroom / leave home, but before I do, I just have one more question for you.

I realize I've been doing this when I have coffee chats with people online.

I forgot where I heard this advice from, but I've never applied it in real life.

I usually stick to one person to chat with, since I don't have anyone else to talk to at the moment, so this never comes up.

I like to perform depth-first instead of breadth-first socializing.

I remember at the airflow event in Toronto I basically talked to this snapchat guy the entire time, which wasn't a bad thing, I learned a lot more about him and his life. But I wish I talked to more people. There was this other open-source guy, but it was just me asking him questions the whole time. The conversation was dry and painfully awkward towards the end that I just had to just slowly remove myself from their circle. It was uncomfortable, but it taught me what to avoid the next time.

I have a lot to learn on how to swiftly and confidently say thank you for the chat, and move on to the next person to talk to. All this gets easier with experience. I haven't been to these kinds of events since Toronto and I'm excited to go back. Communication skills are the bedrock of everything. And one I aim to harness and become pretty good at, by the time I graduate.