Google is holding a Project Ara Developer Conference in Singapore

Google has announced that it will be hosting its second Project Ara Developers Conference for the modular smartphone platform in January next year. Two events will be held, the first will be on 14th January 2015 at Google's global HQ at Mountain View in California, with the agenda repeated on 21st January in Singapore.

Google says that the principal focus of next year’s event will be the next major release of the Ara Module Developers Kit (MDK): version 0.20. The company also says it will demo the latest Ara prototype and developer hardware, highlight some ongoing module development efforts from select developers, and “share early plans for a market pilot in 2015.”

Ara was first announced at the first Ara Developers Conference back in April this year, where team lead Paul Eremenko said that the basic Ara smartphone could retail for just US$50. At that time, it was also announced that the team was targeting a consumer release date of January 2015, although that now seems unlikely.

The agenda for both events is as follows:

• Registration and Breakfast.
• Keynote.
• Ara Platform Technical Progress Update & Roadmap.
• Prototype Device Demo.
• Prize Challenges.
• MDK v0.20 update: Hardware, UniPro Network, Kernel Drivers, Android Framework, Developer Hardware and Demo.
• Market pilot: Rollout Plan, Ara Module Marketplace & Ara Configurator, Retail Experiences.
• Lunch.
• Developer Lightning Round.
• “How to Make a Module” panel.
• Module Test and Certification.
• Metamorphosys Module Developer Tool Chain.
• Birds-of-a-feather Social Event.

Interested developers can apply to register for the event here. Note that there is a registration fee of US$200, although student developers can attend for just US$25 (you'll need a valid student ID).

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