"What have you been excited about recently?" is really great!

Asking people to share what they enjoy / experience they really liked is another opportunity for them to re-experience what they like. A absolutely love questions that allow me to re-live a moment from my vacation, or to share an idea that gets me excited!

Personally I think it is awful, it really puts the person on the spot and under pressure to come up with something interesting. It will basically lead to dead air while they think. Open ended questions are great but the answer should be in a second. That question is designed to for the person to subconsciously think the person asking is expecting something.

What about chaining a few "or" questions after?

If you ask, as you see the person's response - if their face isn't overcome with an expression of excitement, you could continue ... "or something interesting you've seen this year ... or any new place you've been ..." etc.

It's hard to come up with a good one-question strategy that would fit all. As you know more about the person it gets easier to ask fitting questions. For example if they have a child, that's a whole basket of good things to ask - let them be proud about the kid's first steps / first year in school / etc.

Or questions are equally bad because it boxes someone into a binary choice. And that form you gave is far too long and still fairly specific. It is kind of open ended. But open ended questions should be incredibly targeted yet give a lot of leeway. "Oh you lived in Chicago? How did you like it?". "have you been on any trips lately".

You are dead on about dialing questions in after you get some responses though. But being incredibly vague and simple helps to open the conversation up. They have the ability to run any direction with the response. It works for personal relationships and professional interviews. Let the person talk and follow up from there.

Yes, I agree. Opening questions should be simple, not too clever and not require one to reach too much. Small talk is supposed to be a social lubricant that leads to deeper talk, and it is important not to skip too far ahead.

If someone were to ask me what I'm excited about, my two options are "Nothing much" or "I'm trying to use Kubernetes for HPC....". Both are conversation stoppers unless the other party is a nerd.

For me, "what's keeping you busy?" works 80-90% of the time. It reaches into raw memory rather than the analytic side of a person. One can get to the latter eventually, but it needs to be a guided process.