to the present. Back-view mirror analysis It builds upon the assumption that any future oriented group process has to manage peoples' difficulties in thinking into the future. These difficulties can arise from the fears as well as from the lack of experience in futures thinking. Back-view mirror analysis allows dealing with the fears related to the future by creating a new perspective that looks to the past instead of starting the process in the present. The method is used to perform qualitative analysis of the past using both quantitative and qualitative data. Cross-impact analysis The method was developed by Theodore Gordon and Olaf Helmer in 1966 in an attempt to answer a question whether perceptions of how future events may interact with each other can be used in forecasting. As it is well known, most events and trends are interdependent in some ways. Cross-impact analysis provides an analytical approach to the probabilities of an element in a forecast set, and it helps to assess probabilities in view of judgements about potential interactions between those elements. The technique can be used by individuals and groups at an elementary qualitative level as well as it can be employed to perform more complicated and intensive quantitative analysis. One of its strengths is that it forces the attention towards "chains of causality: x affects y; y affects z". On the other side it can be very fatiguing and monotonous. Futures workshops Future workshops were developed by Robert Jungk in order to allow anybody to become involved in creating their preferred future rather than being subjected to decisions made by experts. Future workshops are very strongly action oriented. They aim, first to imagine the desired future, and then to plan it and implement it. Future workshops have four distinctive phases: In the first preparatory phase the issue that will be considered is identified and the structure and details of sessions are arranged. The operative phase involves clarification of the issue considered and articulation of negative experiences in the present situation. In the fantasy stage participants verbalise their desires, dreams, fantasies and views about the future in a free idea generation session. The participants are asked to forget all the limitations and obstacles of the present reality. The last step involves: analysis of the feasibility of ideas and solutions generated in the fantasy phase; recognition of limits and barriers for implementation and discovering how they can