The volume of digital communication created globally is growing. It's estimated that every day: 196.3 billion emails are sent; there are 500 million new tweets to read;  4.75 billion items are shared on Facebook; and over 2 million blog posts go live. With the increase in the amount of digital content, there's a very real chance for marketers to make mistakes.

From small typos to career-ending gaffes, there are certainly many opportunities for us to learn from digital communications mishaps. We aren't doomed to make the same errors over and over. And no, you don't have to read any clickbait articles telling you all things you are doing wrong. Instead, let's focus on the creative process and what we can do to learn from ourselves and from others.

If this post made you think of an experience where you learned from a mistake, please consider sharing it in the comments below. What advice would you give to someone in the same situation?

We can learn from each other to communicate better.

Stephanie Nevilles is a Minneapolis pianist and composer. She will be featured along with other Black emerging artists at The New Griots Festival, August 13-15, at the Phoenix Theater in Uptown.

Stephanie shared some thoughts about participating in this new arts festival: "I want to create experiences through my music and blend genres. I also want to break barriers placed on people of color and women.

"Having an outlet for emerging Black artists to share their work [is exciting]. There is such a wide range of artists participating in this festival. It's important for the community to see and experience the variety of Black art and artists.  I'm very excited to see everyone's work and to share my work with the community."

As part of the festival Stephanie will be performing original music pieces live at The Lost Souls Room on Saturday, August 15 at 4pm. She will also be teaching a free community class Creating An Experience: Music With and Without Words, which is open to all skill levels.

Find more performances and classes on The New Griots Festival schedule at www.newgriotsfestival.com.

Listen to Stephanie's work on Sound Cloud and YouTube.

Related: Interview with The New Griots Festival co-producer Jamil Jude

There's a new theater festival in the Twin Cities. In August the first annual The New Griots Festival features an ambitious lineup of 10 Black emerging artists in performances, workshops, and celebrations.  Theater artist Jamil Jude is one of the co-producers of this three-day event. In his artist interview he explains the inspiration behind New Griots and a little behind the scenes on how to get a new festival on its feet.

What was your inspiration to start The New Griots Festival? Or why New Griots and why now?

Jamil: Josh Wilder [playwright, actor, and co-producer of New Griots] and I were inspired to create the festival because we recognized that the Black artists in this town weren't being widely celebrated. The Twin Cities promotes itself on being artist friendly yet Black artists are so poorly represented in the various mediums. Also, selfishly, Josh and I wanted to meet more talented, young, Black artists in the town.

We wrote a grant application to the Minnesota State Arts Board and were blessed to receive the funding to put the festival together. I'm so happy that granting programs like this exist here in the state. It allows projects like The New Griots Festival and young producers like Josh and me a chance to create a space for the work we want to see.

Why did you choose the name "New Griots?"

Josh and I chose the name because it is connected to a strong history of Black and African storytelling. The word "griots" is a west African term for storyteller. All throughout my life that term has been one of endearment and respect. A community's griot is very well respected; they hold the community's stories and share them. We are identifying with those griots before us and taking our place as the next ones.

What does a producer do?

Jamil: In this case, we've been responsible for finding artists, securing funds, locking down the venue, creating the schedule, marketing, administration, documenting the process and paying the artists when it's all said and done. Since this is the first ever festival, we have to create the infrastructure. We HOPE it won't be that hard next year.

How did you decide what artists would be included? 

Jamil: We found our artist roster in a number of ways. First, we reached out to our networks and asked for suggestions. Second, we put out a call for proposals. After that round, we took a look at the potential artist roster and sought out more artists from the visual and music world, and more women artists. We've arrived at a very aesthetically diverse group with total gender parity.

What kind of response did artists have when you announced New Griots?

Jamil: Response has been great! Artists are excited about having a new festival in town specifically geared to celebrating Black excellence.

How have you gone about promoting this project? Could you talk a little about how you are encouraging audiences to take the leap and try out something new? 

Jamil: We've tried to leverage our current connections to help us market. Social media has been big. We've also asked our artists to promote the festival too. Artists are your best asset in promotion. Our amazing graphic designer, Jamaica Meyer, created really cool graphics and that's been helpful. We put those flyers all over. Finding the community partners whose missions reflect your own is an important value to me and we've found ways to connect our organization to the community groups who desire what we can bring.

Can you talk about the intersection of your two passions of social justice and theater and how that helps you decide what projects you take on?

Jamil: I am passionate about seeing diverse stories on stage. That pushes me to find plays that represent the underrepresented or to create my own projects to tell those stories.

The world premiere of "Leaving St. Paul" took place Friday at the U of M's Rarig Thrust stage as a part of the 2015 Minnesota Fringe Festival. Writer Barbara Teed was in attendance with the guest of honor: her father Arnold Weigel, who the play is based on. Barbara is proud to bring this story to the stage, "As the playwright I wanted my Dad to be recognized for trying to make a difference in integrating Twin Cities suburban neighborhoods. [ . . . ] Arnold risked everything to do what he believed in. I don't know many people who would do that."

The show is inspired by the true story of Arnold working in Twin Cities real estate during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Barbara was a teenager at the time and she witnessed her father helping to integrate white suburban neighborhoods by selling houses to people of color.

Barbara and her family faced serious consequences for her dad's public stand. Three years ago, while she was earning her Master of Liberal Arts at Hamline University, Barbara turned this historical and personal story about her life into her thesis. "I was the victim of much racial bullying as a young teen as the result of my father's stand. Writing and producing 'Leaving St. Paul' has been healing for me," states Barbara. For the 2015 Fringe Festival this production was then adapted for the stage and directed by Meredith Larson, who is an active director and actor in the Twin Cities community. Barbara's daughter, Lindsay Teed, plays Barbara in the play.

"Leaving St. Paul" has received recognition from Minnesota media including the Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio. The performance was also featured by Theatre Unbound as the "Top Twenty best bets for great theater by women." And audience reviewers on the Fringe site have called the performance "eye-opening" and "impactful."

What is your role in the creative process of Craigslist: Not a Musical!?

Greg: We were in the middle of writing a non-themed sketch show at Bryant Lake Bowl called Summer Lovin' Some R Hatin' when I came across an ad in the "gigs" section of Craigslist: "Write me a Song". The guy wanted someone to take his poem and write a song from it. Not that unusual, but he also wanted this songwriter to physically bring himself and his guitar and serenade his girlfriend. I thought to myself "someone's gonna write his girl a song all right, and then this enterprising artist—who is carrying around a six string aphrodisiac—will be taking the girl with him when he's done crooning."

That's when I leapt to the proverbial joke notebook and started writing down the bones of this scenario.

The process: Ah yes, the writing clearly starts with the ad! We never, or almost never and certainly not this time, try to shoehorn in a pre-written sketch or bit by finding the ad afterward. We can be really annoying purists that way. Jennifer Bahe (producer, actor, and writer for Craigslist) has come up with nearly everything we have used for the show, save for the first example. She's an expert at it.  The guideline to picking ads is typically nothing that is overtly trying to be ironic or funny. We like the crackpots.

Also, the ad shouldn't tell the entire story. An ad ripe for picking should leave more questions than answers. Sometimes something as simple as, "Two free dental chairs. Take them. I need the space." inspires us as it did this year; We have an evil Twin Cities dentist (sound familiar?) who is luring people to his home for malevolent purposes.

What excites you about this project?

Greg: Many many things. First of all, the nostalgia of revisiting six of our favorite scenes from the past, knowing exactly where they might have needed a nip and tuck, and in a way being able to rewrite our history, if you will. Second, interjecting our stuff with four new cast members who I can't stop gushing over, and our writer and pal Sam L. Landman, who took a look at the ads and came from a completely different, yet equally insane place. That collaboration has been really exhilarating as a writer, yes-anding Sam.  This is the first time I've played live incidental music (electronic keyboards and guitar) through a whole show. That has been a pretty big challenge to come up with musical bits, mostly on the spot during rehearsals, that enhance and not derail the mood of the scene.

Add the element of Fringe craziness and presenting our brand of humor to a new (and hopefully larger) audience and I think you can see why we're actually pretty jazzed about coming back to this one. 

Are there any other Fringe shows that you are excited about?

Greg: Well of course Sam's other creation at Fringe, "Pretty Girls Make Graves," about the real goths who listened to The Smiths. Other picks "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Death Star," "Frankenstein," "Deus Ex Machina," "Fringe Tonight! with Jonathan Gershberg," "Melancholy London," "The Album,"  "We Do Every Show At The Fringe," "Looking for Fun(Bags)," and "Shelly Bachberg Presents: Orange is the New POTUS: The Musical."

Can you tell me a little about how you collaborate with others in your art? Or a recent successful collaboration?

Greg: Collaboration is everything that doesn't happen in front of a laptop with earbuds on. I feel like the ads themselves, and therefore the writers of the ads, are also collaborators, unwitting or not. The limitations of those ads make all the funny possible, like suggestions before an improv scene. And best of all, we never start out with a blank page!

I trust Jen to be the side of my brain that doesn't work. Producer is a fancy term for everything I can't do or can't do quickly, like scheduling.

Bringing in Meagan Sogge, our stage manager, was great because she is an expert at reining in the chaos and making clear cut sense of it all. No-nonsense all the way, which the right-brained weirdos like myself clearly need in our lives.

How do you market yourself, as an individual artist to get work AND as a show to engage new audiences, and what promotional tools you use?

Greg: Like make money? What's that like? I use Twitter and Facebook and buy Facebook ads. I drive my cast absolutely insane saying things like, "you haven't tweeted anything since July 15; Why is that?" When you are not in a position to hire a promo team, it's down to everybody involved to energetically and positively spread the word.

Finally, is there anything else you wanted to say that I didn't ask about?

Greg: In the end, it's all just an excuse to write some jokes and get some laughs, and maybe bring up a touchy subject from time to time to give people something to talk about, hopefully after the show and not during.