Annabel Bradford

14 April 2021

What’s Redgate’s plan for PASS?

My blog post from February 1 explains that Redgate took the opportunity to purchase the assets of PASS with the main goal of supporting the community.

The PASS association ran for 21 years bringing together a community to connect, share, and learn. The community of course lives on, however the association no longer exists as it once did.

Working with SQL Server and the data platform is what unites us all. Data is at the heart of everything we do. Redgate has been part of the SQL Server community for over 21 years. We, like you, had come to rely on PASS as a steady constant granting us opportunities to connect with you, the community.

We don’t want to try and replace PASS, or reignite the membership as it once was. The key elements we’re focusing on bringing to life, and that merge into our 2021 community strategy are:

• Making the wealth of the PASS content and session recordings available to you all
• Reviving the fundamental activities that provide value to the community – SQLSaturday and PASS Summit

What progress have we made?

Since January, we’ve been able to unlock the most relevant content, making it available and accessible to everyone in the community who wants it. We’re not finished. We know there’s more content to publish and that the current content requires more publicity to help educate more folks in the community. Given that all of this content was published for PASS, this content will continue to be published to the legacy PASS TV channel on YouTube, so it’s available for everyone.

In addition, we’ve focused on our partnership with Microsoft. Redgate is a Gold Microsoft Partner so we already had great connections with the Azure Data team. We’re delighted that Microsoft launched the Azure Data Community and, with them supporting regional user groups to grow, the data platform community will continue to thrive.

What’s next?

Going forward, we’ll be focusing on the second part of the strategy, which is reviving SQLSaturday and the Summit. It’s important to us that the community continue to feel supported and have opportunities to connect, share knowledge and challenges, and learn from one another. By establishing the SQLSaturday foundation and donating the assets, we feel confident that the group of independent community volunteers will steer that stream of activity into the future.

Through launching our community insights survey, which closes on April 15, we’re activity seeking support to help us to design a Summit that will bring the community together. In 2021 while things are virtual, we’ve made the decision to make the Summit free. By removing the typical PASS Summit ticket price-tag, we hope to welcome the largest group of data platform professionals together to learn and discover what this community is all about. While this year’s Summit won’t be in-person, we’ll be doing everything we can to rebuild the buzzing spirit of the PASS Community and create a valuable online experience that will support your career, connections, and learning.

We invite you to save the date, November 8 – 12 2021, and stay tuned for updates. Everyone who is signed up will be the first to hear about the next steps on how you can be involved in bringing this year’s Summit to life.