We just had an utterly humourous play-fight about an hour ago with Jeremy Keith, Brian Suda, Tom Hughes-Croucher, Ian Forrester and myself over microformats and the SemWeb. 
One of the conclusions was that RDF and the Semantic Web needs much better marketing, by taking what works from the marketing of microformats - namely, the plethora of great examples, well-written specifications and tools.
The only difference between us and the microformats folk (who we know and love) is that we prefer the endgame of RDF and the Semantic Web.
HTML is not the end, and we cannot simply observe.
"Macroformats" is a reaction to the accusation that RDF isn't sexy. We want to make RDF sexy, and the Semantic Web fun.
To explain what macroformats are, the important thing is to say what they are not.
Firstly, macroformats are not a replacement for microformats. If you use microformats and they solve problems for you, that is great.
Secondly, macroformats are not anything new. There is absolutely zero new technology. What the macroformat movement does is different - it helps people use pre-existing technology to do new and interesting things. Through a Darwinian process, new and interesting uses will bubble up that aren't imaginable.
We have already seen this with microformats - people are doing things with microformats that are not within the specified 'problem'. Why should we not let the whole web get involved with the development of the web of tomorrow?
The technology that is in development need not be complicated. We need to stop talking about RDF and OWL and SPARQL. We really need to stop talking about ontology development and inference engines and SemWeb research, not because that stuff isn't important - but because that stuff isn't all important.
Technology doesn't matter, data matters.
Keep a watch out - we have registered usemacroformats.com. The macroformats are coming. Semantic Web for the rest of us.
Tags: macroformats, microformats, rdf, barcamplondon2
