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

on January 16, 2019

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 😑