Google announces Project Ara developer conference for January

Progress on Google’s modular smartphone continues and the company today announced two new Project Ara conferences for developers.

Google held the first developer conference back in April and will host two roughly a week apart in just a couple of months’ time.

The first will take place on January 15th in Google’s Mountain View offices. There will be satellite sites set up in New York City, Buenos Aires, and London. The second event will be in Asia. Though the live event will be in Singapore, satellite sites will be set up in Bangalore, Tokyo, Taipei, and Shanghai. Google says it’s possible it may add more satellite sites if there is interest.

Both events will last a full day and will be identical in terms of content and will include demos of prototype devices as well as a module developer kit update (hardware, UniPro network, kernel drivers, Android framework, and developer hardware). Most importantly, there will be sessions on building, testing, and certifying modules.

There’s also a little something for those that don’t plan to develop modules for Ara but are interested in the platform’s progression. The agenda issued by Google promises info on the rollout plan, the Ara Module Marketplace, and the Ara Configurator, which we assume will be a place where users can make mock ups of their device before ordering new parts.

The deadline for submitting applications to attend is November 26, 2014. You’ll know in early December if you made the cut. At that point you’ll be expected to pony up the registration fee, which is between $25 and $200.

[source]Google ATAP[/source]