It really depends on the directory. All the penguin update did was to filter out links that are of no value to its searchers. So submitting links to spammy directories will not hurt your profile, it just will not help either.
If You submit your site in the relevant directory, it is worth. Also there are directories with nofollow attributes. It simply drives traffic to your site & does not impact your site search engine rankings.
Directory submission are still worth. It increase your website ranking as well as helps to increase traffic.
It will because Directory are not only for our SEO purpose. It is the place where one can get information about the particular industry. If some one is searching for any particular industry they can search in Dmoz directory and they can get the helpful.
So everyone here agrees that Directory Submissions are worth while. However in a Link Building Survey taken by some of the worlds top SEOs, directory submissions were ranked among the 5 least effective methods to build links. (Survey:http://moz.com/blog/link-building-survey-2013-the-results-infographic) This just goes to show you that out of every 100 people that say they know all about SEO, only 1 or 2 know what they are talking about really.
Directory submission is important only when you submit your site in relevant directory.. It increase your websites ranking and also helps in bringing traffic to your site..
Bulk submission on directories can be hurt the worth of your website only work on the niche directory but also work on the other SEO off page things like blogging, forum post, article submission, social bookmarking and blog commenting.