Yesterday at about 6pm Pacific Time, Paralympian Josh Dueck broke the previous Guinness World Record for the most high fives in a 24 hour period of 3131. Hell he broke it only after the first 5 hours, as part of Work Safe BC’s Raise Your Hand campaign which brings awareness to work safety issues for the youth. During the 24 hour period, Josh high fived 9307 different people while at the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE).
What I found interesting was the process of recording each high five. To have the high five count, Josh had to have his hand over his head, no side slaps, no grabbing of the hand were allowed and it had to be a flat palm on palm. Each person who gave a high five was stamped to make sure they weren’t giving him another one later on. To make sure this was all official, there was an independent film crew with 2 cameras filming every high five, as well as to separate people with counters counting every single high five. Every 20 minutes or so, they would stop, record their time, record the video stop time, and the counters would compare their numbers. The videos would be later sent to Guinness where they would be watched and the high fives would be officially confirmed, a process that will take about a month.
Josh is truly inspiring and I was glad to have been apart of his world record. You can see more photos on my Flickr Set – Raise Your Hand
