Kicked-Off Rally?

The people behind one convention registration desk at the Century Plaza Hotel were understandably perplexed when conference attendees asked Wednesday where the “kick-off rally” was supposed to be staged.

“I think you’ve got the wrong conference,” said one woman, representing the National Selected Morticians, a trade organization of funeral directors that was meeting last week on the same floor of the same hotel as the National Minority Suppliers Development Council.

The minority suppliers, not the morticians, were the ones staging the kick-off rally, where regional groups could boast how much business their members did last year with minority-owned companies.

Although signs with the two groups’ similar initials--NSM and NMSDC--were abundant, some attendees of the minority suppliers conference were immediately tipped off to the difference by a taped presentation of funeral industry products.