The Internet of Things (IoT) is split into different vertically oriented platforms for integration of all the different devices, today. Developers who aim to access those platforms and access their data need to manually adapt to the platform-specific API and data models. This presentation highlights the work of the BIG IoT project that aims at igniting an IoT ecosystem as part of the European Platform Initiative (IoT EPI). To illustrate the approach of the project, the talk will present the setup of the use cases that are being implemented in Northern Germany. Please refer to www.big-iot.eu for further details.