With CIAA coming up, here’s a mini-guide to the week’s tech and innovation events

I’ll get super elementary with you here on what the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA)  even is since we might not all be sports-watching folks.

The CIAA hosts the oldest scholastic sports competition for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the US. The latest iteration of the tournament takes place between Tuesday, Feb. 21 and Friday, Feb. 25; the CIAA and cohost Visit Baltimore, the city’s semi-public tourism agency, have committed to keeping the annual tournament in Charm City through at least 2025.

By its hosting role, Visit Baltimore created a series of free events to bring Baltimoreans together with CIAA athletes, students, alumni of participant schools (the closest of which are Bowie State University and Lincoln University in counties surrounding DC and Philadelphia, respectively) and fans. This includes a tech summit — more on that later.

We took a preliminary glance at the full schedule of happenings during the tournament, which takes place again at the CFG Bank Arena in downtown Baltimore, and it’s filled with day parties, fan fests, scavenger hunts and more. Whether you’re feeling overwhelmed or just don’t know the choices,   fret not ‚— we’re here to help our readers stay focused on goals for themselves and their organizations or ideas during CIAA.

Technical.ly readers may already have used the Whova app at conferences; if not, make sure you download it for up-to-date information about the tournament and related events.

Otherwise, here’s some more information to help you navigate next week’s festivities:

Where it’s all happening

Now that you’ve got the Whova app downloaded, you can see the stellar lineup of free events happening at The Rita Rossi Colwell Center in the Inner Harbor.  According to its website,  Colwell Center parking is available next door at the Pier V Garage. This reporter always gets lucky with street parking but doesn’t recommend it if you’re not diligent about paying the meter.

For when you get hungry

Five words: Black Owned Restaurant Tour Week.

You could also follow Charm City Table, who you can bet will post dining tips for the week in her stories. She already authored this list of Black-owned restaurants, bakeries, bars and food trucks at the start of Black History Month.

The entire lineup of events, from the men’s and women’s basketball games to the Youth Cheer Clinic, offers something valuable for our readers. But since we mentioned tech and entrepreneurship, here’s a short list of constituent events that we think you could benefit from the most:

The Health + Mental Wellness Summit (Feb. 23):

Yummy, healthy food absolutely motivate this writer, and we hope it inspires you, too. Expect a healthy cooking demo with Micknai Arefaine, an alum of Baltimore Creatives Acceleration Network (BCAN) and founder of  Habesha Flavor. You may have tried its food during its summer 2022  tenancy at R. House.

If you’re a technologist and entrepreneur but also a hip-hop head (RIP Trugoy the Dove), Styles P will be in town for a “Healthy Gut Fireside Chat” with Vegan SoulFest cofounder Naijha Wright-Brown. That festival staged a constituent event, the inaugural We Give Black Fest, in partnership with CLLCTIVLY last year.

The Tech Summit House (Feb. 24)

Check out “The Rise of Women in Tech,” starting at 11:15 a.m. and featuring speakers you’ll definitely know or want to know: Brittany Young, founder of B-360 and Arion Long CEO of 2022 Technical.ly Awards-winning Femly. You won’t want to go too far unless you need to feed the meter because immediately following that session is a live iteration of the “No Pix After Dark Podcast,” during which host Aaron Dante will speak with Fearless CEO Delali Dzirasa. Jamyla Bennu, Kory Bailey and Troy LeMaile-Stovall are among the other names on the schedule for the day.

The Money Moves Financial Summit (Feb. 25)

If you’re a bit busy during the work week, no worries: Saturday’s programming includes a panel, entitled “Young, Black, and Invested,” in which panelists will discuss real estate opportunities and projects in Baltimore. That panel will be moderated by Venroy July, a partner at the law firm Dickinson Wright, and Imani Yasin, who works with 2022 TED speaker Bree Jones at Parity Homes.

You can register for everything we mentioned and everything you’re interested in inside the app. You could go to all of the CIAA events, but we wouldn’t recommend it for your mental health. It would also likely be humanly impossible — unless you’ve cloned yourself. If you have, please send us the scoop.