One of the key benefits of lightweight DITA is that it frees the value points of DITA from a strict dependency on the XML format. You can author valid lightweight DITA content in multiple formats, including markdown and HTML5.
These slides, developed by Michael Priestley, Jenifer Schlotfeldt, and Carlos Evia, accompanied a demonstration of how lightweight topics of various content types can be created in XML, markdown, and HTML5, while continuing to make use of standard DITA features such as content reuse and conditional processing and flowing into a common published deliverable, such as an HTML web site, PDF, or EPUB.