Read the virtual room through other speakers' faces.
technique — attributed to Steven Clemons
Reading a virtual audience is harder than reading a room. The most reliable signal is the visible face of any speaker who has been watching the rest of the program. They have been an audience for a while. If they are turned on, the audience is. If they are bored, the audience is. The moderator who learns to read the speaker's face gets near-real-time audience signal even when the audience itself is invisible.
For moderators and producers of virtual events without good real-time audience-feedback signals.
virtual-room, speaker-feedback, moderator-craft, audience-reading