PSA: Community Secret Shop @ TI12

Hello everyone!

I know it's very far out from TI and still have to get through Bali Major (Hope everyone going has fun and that we get a super entertaining major!)

Regardless of how far out it is, wanted to give as much time for those in the community that want to take advantage of this opportunity. At TI this year, on the 26th October (between playoffs and finals) there will be a community secret shop (aptly named the side shop ) running from the morning time until well into the day.

All products at these events will be directly stocked and sold by the teams, the artists and/or their representatives. At no point will the venue hosts be affiliated with any of the teams/artists/representatives sales, we will be a completely neutral and independent party who is just providing the venue.

A little background about our group:

We are community focused group who have been trying to create experiences for people travelling solo or in groups that want to have a larger group to share their passion for the game with. The group has grown from being a handful of people to over 1000 in our discord, we have been running meetups surrounding TI and more recently majors for several years now (originally formed back in TI8) if you'd like to have a look around at all of our previous event meetups you can view any of our archives with pictures, videos etc from previous years in the discord server whether that be the cinema event which was ran in the server for TI10, the watchparty for TI11 or simple things like Korean BBQ meetups. Invite link for those that want it: https://discord.gg/B23tZvF

All of our events are community ran, any individual in the server can set a place and time for a meetup and we let the community decide if they're interested enough. Anyway, enough about that!

What this event will entail:

The idea of this will be to provide a single venue where Dota fans can come out and have access to the Dota community's talent whether that be painting, digital art, sculptures or anything that I didn't include there (think artist alley.)

We will attempt to get in touch with teams once the Bali major is over so that they can provide opportunities for team gear to the community as well. This will include division 2 teams.

Like many many people on here I'm absolutely blown away by the quality of work done by some within our community with the massively varying artwork, paintings, sculptures, figurines etc! I'm very aware how tough it is for artists out there and creative hobbyists. Hopefully this can be the start of an outlet for our wonderful community to share their creativity.

​

• There will be zero venue cost for those that want to have an exhibit. The only cost will be for those that may require a business license (This will be your own responsibility but here to help you all I can!) and of course, gotta pay your state sales tax on your goods.
• The venue will be entirely neutral in its promotion, no team will be promoted over another nor will any artist be promoted over another.
• The setup will be first come first served. If you're there first to setup your stuff you'll be able to choose your booth/exhibit/stall location first. (There will be much more details on this posted within the discord later on)

We are currently looking at running this event at the University of Washington.

For more details on this event, you can read through the discord which will have many more updates to come and community events (such as pub meetups, dinner meetups - No Prepayment or anything like that, you just pay your own way and we all meet at a particular place)! https://discord.gg/B23tZvF

For participants and discord community members there will also be invitation-only events around TI and majors.