This comes up over and over and seems like one of the things that every design should have a standard response to.

In the case of non-technical users (regular people, not programmers or anybody that would actually know what UTC is or who would care about current GMT)

How should the time zone be titled? Some options: "Pacific (Seattle & LA)" "Pacific (UTC +8)" "Pacific Standard Time (UTC +8)" "Pacific Time (US: Seattle)"

It seems like including a major city is helpful. Is it standard to offer redundant options in the same time zone with different major cities? Seems especially helpful for Arizona which has some different timezones in it.

I, personally, get confused about Daylight vs Standard time and I don't want to have to get it right in the interface based on the date somebody entered. I'd like to just assume that people say 2pm on a date and plan to have something happen at 2pm whether it's Daylight Savings time or not.

Context: users creating events that have a specific date, start time, end time and location (that exists in the google maps api)