Watch all my free PASS Summit recordings-- and more videos at Pass.org

A magical thing happened this week in the SQL Community Slack (it’s free to join, by the way, sign up here).

In the midst of a discussion about the cost of attending conferences, Benni De Jagere shared the following tweet from Cathrine Wilhelmsen:

Did you know that ALL the session recordings from PASS Summit 2017 (and earlier) are available for free? :) Get your learning on here: https://pass.org/Learning/Recordings/Listing.aspx?category=Summit #SQLPass #PASSsummit #SQLFamily

I follow Cathrine, but apparently I need to follow her more closely, as I’d missed this tweet on the 14th. I had no idea these recordings were free and searchable.

These free sessions include way more than the Summits

I checked out which recordings are available, and my mind was blown – it’s not just past PASS Summit recordings (excluding the 2018 Summit, most of which are not currently free), but also user group talks, 24 Hours of PASS Recordings, everything!

How do I watch?

Note – these instructions updated in May 2021, following Redgate’s publishing of past PASS Summit content to YouTube

• Head to the PASStv youtube channel
• Search for recordings by topic or speaker name

That’s about it. It’s a treasure trove of stuff.

A list of my PASS Sessions

Here’s a list of my sessions on the PASS Site, along with notes of their “freshness” today:

2019

• Get Inspired: Celebrate the Careers of Three DevOps Heroes with Kendra Little
  • WIT Virtual Chapter, Jan 2019
  • Freshness 💯

2018

• Fix My Functions: Speeding Up Scalar and Table Valued UDFs
  • Summit 2018
  • Note: this one isn’t showing as free on the ‘Learning’ site, but it was livestreamed during the Summit, so it’s available via other channels. Watch the recording.
  • Freshness 💯
• How Keys & Included Columns Work by Kendra Little
  • Data Architecture Virtual Chapter, June 2018
  • Freshness 💯
• Why is that Data Wrong? How Choosing the Wrong Isolation Level Causes Bad Results
  • 24 Hours of PASS, June 2018
  • Freshness 💯

2017

• When Partitioning Indexes Hurts Performance (and How to Fix It)
  • PASS Summit, 2017
  • Freshness ☺ - batch mode for rowstore is coming up soon, but other than that it’s quite current
• Why Did My Clever Index Change Backfire?
  • PASS Summit, 2017
  • Freshness 💯
• SSMS Shortcuts & Secrets - Kendra Little
  • DBA Fundamentals Virtual Chapter, Sept 2017
  • Freshness 💯
• Why Did My Clever Index Change Backfire?
  • 24 Hours of PASS, Summit Preview, 2017
  • Freshness 💯 - note, this is a preview of the live summit session above

2016

• The Great Performance Robbery: Locking Problems and Solutions
  • PASS Summit 2016
  • Freshness 💯
• 3 Skills Every Junior DBA Must Know
  • DBA Fundamentals Virtual Chapter, July 2016
  • Freshness 💯

2015

• Take the SQL Server Index Quiz!
  • 24 Hours of PASS Summit Preview, 2015
  • Freshness ☺
• How to Configure Quorum in SQL Server
  • HA/DR Virtual Group, May 2016
  • Freshness – a lot has changed in this area since 2015 😑

2014

• World’s Worst Performance Tuning Techniques
  • PASS Summit 2014
  • Freshness 💯
• Why Does SQL Server Keep Asking for this Index?
  • PASS Summit 2014
  • Freshness - main points are still true, but I haven’t tested the demo against higher compatibility levels to see if the same execution plans are still generated

2013

• How to Tell When Storage Is a Problem
  • PASS Summit 2013
  • Freshness is surprisingly high – I’m talking about interpreting DMVs and perf counters here, not which SAN to buy, so it’s still spot on 💯

2012

• Index Psychiatry: Diagnose and Treat the Top 5 Disorders
  • PASS Summit 2012
  • Freshness - I show the sp_BlitzIndex procedure in this talk. That procedure has changed a lot since the talk, so it’ll look different. Concepts discussed are still true for disk based nonclustered rowstore 💯
• SQL Server First Responder Kit
  • PASS Summit 2012
  • Freshness - medium 😑

2011

• No More Bad Dates: Best Practices for Working With Dates and Times
  • PASS Summit 2011
  • Freshness - medium 😑

Thanks to PASS for publishing these videos for free!

I had a lot of fun looking through my own videos, and I love having this library of free videos as a learning site for fundamental concepts.