On September 24, 2010, a major earthquake will trigger an oil spill off the coast of Southern California, damaging critical infrastructure and driving residents from their homes.  Or at least, that’s the premise of Exercise 24, an experiment to test the power of social media and online collaboration to assemble resources in a crisis.  Exercise 24 is being organized by San Diego State University’s Immersive Visualization Center, known as the Viz Center.  The Viz Center is involved in humanitarian assistance disaster relief for groups like the U.S. Navy and the use of Cloud Computing, mobile devices, and open-source software to assist decision-makers and the public (http://www.inrelief.org).  Exercise 24 aims “to explore collaborative solutions to emergency response, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and environmental impact challenges associated with a major earthquake.”  The idea is to see how national and international authorities, organizations and citizens would react to such an event in southern California – who and what they would send and how they would communicate with the boots on the ground.  Exercise 24 is seeking participants.  The invite is open to municipal, state, federal, and tribal governments and organizations, non-government organizations, education centers, faith-based groups, volunteer groups, businesses, and individuals.  Any costs would be paid by the participants themselves.