News to snooze by

A recent poll suggests that most executives have either fallen asleep or felt sleepy during dull presentations, and many report having seen others dozing off.

The online poll, conducted by Infommersion, makers of Xcelsius data-visualization software, tabulated the responses of 382 business managers. Seventy-one percent of the respondents admitted to having fallen asleep or getting a case of the nods during a presentation; 43 percent said they had seen others snooze through meetings.

According to the poll, the most difficult types of presentations to remain fully awake through were individual speeches (35 percent), followed by training sessions (23 percent) and general meetings (16 percent). Only 11 percent said they found it difficult to keep their eyes open during Webcasts.

The most important ingredient for presentation success was reported to be "an animated and enthusiastic" speaker (51 percent), and 36 percent said that an "interesting and interactive" presentation helped. Only 3 percent of the survey respondents said it helped if the presenter was "good-looking," a statistic welcomed by ugly, energetic people everywhere.