Are you ready to assemble your smartphone from individual parts? Google's Project Ara wants to make that happen, and it's just taken an important step forward with its own developer conference.

The first of three Project Ara conferences will take place April 15-16, according to the Ara site. It'll actually be held online, letting developers from anywhere join, although Google will host a small in-person gathering at the Computer History Museum near its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

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When Google sold Motorola to Lenovo, it made sure to keep the company's Advanced Technology And Products (ATAP) group, whose mission is aligned with other Google "moonshot" projects: to push technology forward by leaps and bounds, not increments.

Project Ara is Google's moonshot for the smartphone world: It aims to break the device down into its various components — camera, processor, storage, etc. — and let owners purchase them separately to upgrade or enhance their experience to their liking. As Google describes it, Ara will do for mobile hardware what Android did for mobile software.

The project is interesting and ambitious, even though it's unclear if anyone really wants a modular smartphone. In any case, the (planned) price is right: Google wants to start by selling a stripped down phone, without even a cellular connection, for $50. While the device would perform only as a basic smartphone, adding more modules would enhance its abilities to meet its owner's needs.

The coming conference will give developers a detailed overview of what Ara will be. Just before the event Google plans to release the Ara Module Development Kit. Although Google notes that it'll give priority to in-person attendees, it's not closing the doors on the conference — the company encourages both non-developers and enthusiasts to join via livestream.

Google plans to release the conference's agenda in the next few weeks. No dates yet on the other two conferences, but Google says they'll take place in 2014. In conjunction with the announcement, Google launched a @ProjectAra Twitter account.

BONUS: Project Ara Poll