I was a victim of internet plagiarism

I often present at developer-focused conferences and user groups on JavaScript and web platform topics.  One presentation I give is on JavaScript Internationalization (initially at the 2013 internal Technology Unconference and most recently this summer at That Conference).  My title and abstract are below.

Internationalize your JavaScript Application: Prepare for “the next billion” internet users.

Are you prepared for “the next billion” internet users, most of whom don’t use English as their primary language?

This session will explore the globalization (internationalization and localization) of JavaScript based applications. It will look at the ECMAScript Internationalization API and popular open source projects like AngularJS, messageformat.js, jQuery Globalize and twitter-cldr-js.

Topics will include cultures/locales, character encoding, number formatting, date formatting, choice/plural formatting and translations.

Yesterday I got a message from a friend that informed me that someone was presenting the following session at an AngularJS meetup:

il8n for AngularJS: Prepare for “the next billion” internet users

Are you prepared for “the next billion” internet users, most of whom don’t use English as their primary language?

We will explore the various strategies for globalization (internationalization, localization and pluralization) of AnguarJS Applications, discussing the various pros and cons of each of these techniques. We will also take a look at the ECMAScript Internationalization API and other popular open-source projects, libraries and modules, the objective being to identify certain factors that affect the decision of what approach to ultimately take in building out a custom solution or integrating an existing one.

Topics will include cultures/locales, number formatting, datetime formatting, choice/plural formatting (using ng-pluralize) and translations along with best practices, common pitfalls and finally, the role of the API (backend server).

The abstract looks like a blatant copy of my subtitle, lead sentence and overall abstract structure.  What to do now?  Rage Tweet?  I decided to email the meetup organizers, asking them to look into my concern.  They replied and informed me they had contacted the speaker to address the issue.  They had also viewed the content, and it was original.  Later that day, the abstract was updated to remove the explicitly copied text.

Internationalize AngularJS: Globalized Apps for a Global Audience

Your app may work great in your region, but how well does it work for the rest of the world’s internet users, a large number of whom don’t use English as their primary language?

We will explore various strategies for internationalization, including localization and translations, of AngularJS applications, discussing the various pros and cons of each technique. We will also briefly examine the ECMAScript Internationalization API and other popular open-source projects (modular libraries) for similarities and differences; the objective being to identify certain factors that affect the decision of what approach to ultimately take in building globalization support into your new and/or existing AngularJS applications.

Topics will include number and datetime formatting, cultures/locales, pluralization (using ngPluralize) and gender formatting, along with best practices, common pitfalls and finally, the role of your API (backend server).

After the meetup, I took a look at the speaker’s slide deck to see if any of my content was copied.  It appears this was an original presentation, but the speaker did borrow my numeronym joke (original credit to Rick Preston). However, it works much better with my name (K3n H6n), which also ends with the letter n like I18n and L10n.   It only contained about 25% of what I cover in my presentation, and the speaker did credit me on his closing slide.

How do you think I handled the situation?  What could I have done differently or is there anything I should still do?  Have you been a victim of internet plagiarism?  Let me know in the comments below.