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From Six Pixels Of Separation To Thinking With Mitch Joel

One thousand.

It’s a big number.. it’s also a strange number.
When I started Six Pixels of Separation back in 2003, it wasn’t a brand.
It was a simple marketing blog… a way to put ideas out into the world while running the digital agency I had co-founded, Twist Image.

The name? It felt right for the moment.

Back then, the internet was still “other.”
Something you logged into.
Something that lived on a screen.
But we were connecting in ways we could have never imagined.
We were no longer six degrees of separation from people we didn’t know… we were all suddenly interconnected… six pixels of separation.

But names do something else: they hold you in a place and time.

Six Pixels grew.
It turned from a blog into one of the first voices for how media and culture were shifting towards digital.
It became the name of my first book (published in 2009).
It became a front row seat to conversations with some of the smartest people on the planet (when the podcast launched in 2006).
It also became my personal playground and studio… tracking my own shifts as a marketing agency executive… to business writer… keynote speaker… media person… to builder of what comes next.

And here we are.

We published episode #1000 of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast this past Sunday.
That number stopped me in my tracks.
A milestone like that forces reflection.
Because the content has never been just about marketing… or technology.
It’s been about thinking.
About how to think better about complex topics in an ever-innovative world.
About how we navigate disruption, embrace change and find the patterns hiding under the noise.

So from now on, Six Pixels of Separation becomes Thinking with Mitch Joel.

This isn’t about abandoning the past.
It’s about aligning the signal with what’s already here.
Technology is no longer separate.
We don’t log into it.
We live inside of it.
The pixels are gone.

What remains is the work… the thinking… about what it means to be human in a world being remade by code, culture, and capital.

The podcast will continue.
The essays and articles will continue.
The conversations will continue.
But with a name that speaks more clearly to what we’ve been doing all along.

And yes, it also connects better to my business, ThinkersOne, and everything we are doing to help companies get first access to new ideas from the brightest experts out there.

ThinkersOne is my attempt to take this same idea (that the right thought at the right time can shift how we see everything) and make it accessible inside companies everywhere.
Personal, custom and actionable.
Not another keynote or video, but a spark that teams can actually use in the moments that matter.

In many ways, Thinking with Mitch Joel and ThinkersOne are two sides of the same coin.

One is public, open and ongoing.
The other is focused, intentional and designed for business.

Both are about one thing: elevating how we think… together.

Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.