Students procrastinate by taking ‘selfies’ for world record

Warwick University collaborated with SanDisk in a world record attempt to take the most selfies simultaneously across multiple venues on Wednesday 7 May.

Over 200 Warwick students gathered in the Piazza at 12.30 on Wednesday to take part in the selfie world record attempt.

Each participant had to submit a qualifying selfie, which had to be taken by a smart phone or tablet held by the participant. Qualifying selfies had to feature the face, neck and part of the arm used to take the photo.

Alongside Warwick, students from four other European universities took part in the world record attempt: EFAP Paris in France, Hochschule Fresenius in Germany, Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain and the University of Siena in Italy.

Each university had a target of 200 participants with the hope to set a record of 1000 people simultaneously taking selfies across the five institutions.

Warwick achieved a total of 210 valid selfie submissions, the attending Guinness World Record Official confirmed.

The record attempt was organised by SanDisk to celebrate the launch of their new SanDisk Ultra 128GB microSDXC memory card designed for Android smart phones and tablets.

In order to promote the Event, SanDisk offered a free goodie bag to all participants including free t-shirts.
Caroline Chauvire, SanDisk’s Senior PR & Channel Marketing Manager, commented: “We want to set this record to help bring to life in a fun and tangible way the amount of content smartphone and tablet users consume.”

Ms Chauvire highlighted that young people were increasingly taking more photos and so hoped the event would “showcase the necessity of the SanDisk Ultra 128GB microSDXC card.”

Marco Frigatti, a representative from Guinness World Records, said: “’Selfies’ have become part of main stream culture, with the word itself recently being accepted into the Oxford English Dictionary.”

Sameel Tariq, a Finance and Economics Masters student who took part in the event, was enthused by the idea: “It’s a new concept; it’s a unique way of marketing their product.”

First-year Economics student Mary Arcari also enjoyed the event. She stated: “It was a lot of fun. It’s great to be part of something different #freegifts.”

Mr Frigatti added: “We’re excited to see whether SanDisk is successful with this attempt as it will make a great, and culturally relevant, addition to the Guinness World Records title-holder family.”