A few minor quibbles.

1) “Informal learning” can happen at school. In fact I suspect that it’s as much a part of education as the actual curricula.

2) I’m not sure about your use of the word “vector”. It seems to be used as a synonym for force, which isn’t correct. “Vector” describes anything with both magnitude and direction.

3) “Otherwise known as the Web” is a sentence fragment, but the bigger problem is that, as a dramatic reveal, it feels a bit forced.

4) It might help to add a bit of context. That is, I don’t see a place where “Drumbeat” is explained to be an open technology conference. I’d also like to see the relationship between concept:”Drumbeat” and concept:”Learning, Freedom, and the Web” made explicit.

Hope that’s helpful.

Like Doc and Marty McFly — This seems a bit out of place
“Change rumbles like a seismic wave” — this automatically made me thing of “seesmic” since it is related to the web but that might just be me.

It is information heavy, which is a good thing. However, it might be helpful to have something that unifies it. Right now it still feels a little bit disjointed. I love the last paragraph. I don’t know if it would be possible but if you could weave the imagery you have of a voyage and a storm (the lightening striking) throughout, it might make the narrative a bit more cohesive and bring it all together.

Example: Say voyage and storm get introduced in the opening paragraph.

Then when you get here: “Everyone gets to invent their own end to the story.” could be something like “Everyone gets to create their destination” (but something better than that, obviously).

I’m excited to see everything once it’s together. Keep it up!