First guests of the Mainstage

On the Mainstage of WMF, personalities and guests from all over the world will come together and share inspirational talks, visionary speeches, and case studies with the audience.

The Festival, which will return to Rimini on June 15-17, will feature top-tier personalities and inspiring voices on the Mainstage, including world-renowned sociologist Manuel Castells, AI expert and Silicon Valley pioneer Jerry Kaplan, Rika Nakazawa of Americas NTT, Monica Orsino of Microsoft, and the comeback of Robot Sophia. The Mainstage will also host representatives from internationally renowned companies such as INTEL, IIT - Italian Institute of Technology, ESA - European Space Agency, and WWF, institutional figures such as CINECA President Francesco Ubertini, INFN President Antonio Zoccoli, Swedish Ambassador Jan Björklund, and successful creators including Breaking Italy, Camihawke, and Pow3r.

Discover the first Mainstage guests announced!

Note: the program is still under construction and may undergo some changes. Further information on rooms and speakers will be available soon.

Guest of honor

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the special guest that will be live on the Mainstage of the eleventh edition of WMF - We Make Future, International Trade Fair and Festival on Tech and Digital Innovation, scheduled to take place at the Rimini Expo Centre from June 15 to 17, 2023.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA. Named one of Time Magazine’s ‘100 Most Important People of the 20th Century,’ he is the co-founder and CTO of Inrupt, which uses pioneering Solid technology to put individuals in control of their data and give organizations new opportunities to create value for customers in an open marketplace of innovation.

In 1989 while at CERN, Sir Tim invented the World Wide Web. Sir Tim is the Founder and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which makes technical standards for the Web and the World Wide Web Foundation whose mission is that the World Wide Web serves humanity.

He co-founded and is President of the Open Data Institute in London and is a Professor of Computer Science at Oxford University, and an Emeritus Professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2013, Sir Tim, along with Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, Louis Pouzin and Marc Andreesen, was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for "ground-breaking innovation in engineering that has been of global benefit to humanity."

In April 2017, Sir Tim was awarded the Turing Prize, considered the "Nobel Prize of Computing”. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and the National Academy of Science. He has been the recipient of several honorary degrees and awards, most recently the Seoul Peace Prize in 2022 for his work promoting data sovereignty and leading the movement to “decentralize” the web.

Our guests

Sophia is the world's most advanced humanoid robot. Produced by Hong Kong company Hanson Robotics, it is able to converse naturally with humans, sense movements, and exhibit expressiveness. It is the first android in history to be granted citizen status, and the first non-human to receive a title from the United Nations, as "Innovation Champion."

Manuel Castells, a U.S. naturalized sociologist and politician, is a leading analyst of the digital revolution that has affected individual, social, and work dynamics worldwide. Today he is an ACC professor of Communication at the University of Southern California. He has been awarded the Balzan Prize for Sociology and has been Minister of Universities in the Spanish government.

Alessandro Masala is an Italian content creator, and founder of Breaking Italy, one of the most watched programs on YouTube Italy. He gave up his studies in political science and the path already laid out in hotel management to devote himself to art, and the creation of innovative formats, becoming in effect a communicator. He tackles topics ranging from news to foreign affairs, via technology, politics, and gaming.

Jan Björklund has been Ambassador of Sweden in Italy since 2020. A Swedish politician, he served as Sweden's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education and Research until the 2014 elections.