The 2008 Minnesota Fringe Festival ^[1] starts on Thursday, July 31. You have approximately 120 hours in which to do the following things:

• If you are new to the Minnesota Fringe, start at the New to Fringe page ^[2].
• Admire the radically improved ease of navigation of the Minnesota Fringe’s website, fringefestival.org ^[3].
• Follow Minnesota Fringe on Twitter. That’s @mnfringe ^[4]. You might want to turn device updates on for them. That Twitter feature or may not actually be working, but it’s a good idea just in case.
• Check out the directory of online, ongoing Fringe coverage ^[5]. In particular, subscribe to:
  • the Fringe’s staff blog ^[6].
  • the Fringe bloggers ^[7], making their home this year at the TC Daily Planet. (I love this partnership!)
• View all of the Fringe Showcase performances at the Minnesota Fringe’s YouTube channel ^[8], which will help you decide in advance what you do and don’t want to see.
• For the love of Pete, start putting your schedule ^[9] together. NOW. You can just browse (shows are sortable by a variety of factors), or you can register with the site, login, and put together your own customized schedule. I usually dump every performance of every show I’m interested in on the schedule, start at the beginning and make a choice for each time slot, then remove remaining performances from the schedule once I’ve seen them.
• Then decide how many tickets ^[10] you need to buy and whether you need multi-show discount passes, or if you can just get by going to one show at a time. Also see about reserving tickets to any must-see shows you have identified. This is important as buzz builds later in the week.
• Familiarize yourself with the location of the Bedlam Theater, this year’s Fringe Central ^[11]. No rotating afterparties this year.
• Twitch with barely-contained excitement.