# OMI is growing up!

The time has come for OMI to leave the incubator AngellXR. Since it's formation in 2021, OMI has been hosted by AngellXR, who has provided server space, infrastructure and financial resources to grow OMI. We will always be most grateful for that, and hope to maintain a friendship for ever. At two years old now, and preparing to pro-actively grow the membership, it's time for OMI to spread its wings.

This also means OMI is moving to its own Discord server, and while this is understandably disruptive, it is also a good time to review our communication, clean up and update our websites, coordinate groups better and revisit what we stand for and what we do.

**What does OMI stand for?**
Apart from the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group, which is literally what OMI stands for, OMI also stands for grassroots participation. A social connection between different metaverse groups.

**What does OMI do?**
In a way, whatever you want. There are a few more formal working groups, but anyone is welcome to create a working group in the #omi-experiments channel on our Discord. OMI is designed for participation from everyday people - or "normies", university groups, students, hobbyists, anyone. While we do prefer open source, we are more concerned about building an open ecosystem.

**OK but what is the metaverse, anyway?**
You know what, whatever. While we feel rather strongly that one virtual world is not the metaverse (not even if it's Facebook, er, Meta) and not even a collection of virtual worlds, we're OK with however you describe the metaverse. We're about building whatever bits of this metaverse thing interests you, together. We have some members passionate about virtual worlds, some about integrating data, some about open protocols, whatever rocks your boat.

**Get in touch!**
Join our new Discord server:
Or join via Matrix:
We also have a mailing list now:

In following blogposts, we will share our thinking behind our logo, introduce our new chairs, and share some ideas of what type of engagement we are pursuing, and how we plan to implement that.