A conferencing system supporting active and passive participants is disclosed. The conferencing system includes a client component defining active and passive participants, and a server component having a connection to each active and passive participant defined in the client component. The server component includes a connection manager for managing the connection between each active and passive participant and the server component, a media mixer for receiving conference media and for distributing conference media to active and passive participants, and a virtual producer for selecting conference media to be distributed to passive participants. The conference media provided to the passive participants is dynamically determined based upon activities and selections of a set of active participants.