In the context of communication categories (a, b, and others) it may be useful particularly to view conversations as persona building (as above), because there is a subset of people who do not tell stories about what they have done, but tell you about what they are doing -- or simply do them. The person who shows up with Google Cardboard or TARDIS nail polish is signaling strongly without telling any stories. Depending on your goals, this may be a more effective way of persona building than learning to tell stories.

On the other hand, if you want to improve conversational skills, you might instead focus on finding productive questions to ask -- it is very hard to determine what stories people will enjoy, but most people will enjoy telling you about themselves, and this appears to be true even if you ask very simple questions.