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Here are some things I've done in between serious periods of technical consulting. Not for everyone, but every few years its good to go out and do something different.

Travel Writer. While you are still in school, take journalism and creative writing classes. Learn to sell your articles. Use your computer skills to create a website, and maintain your articles in a database or wiki where you can pull one up and quickly re-write it into a new article. Then every time you travel, make sure about 4 hours of each day are spent working on your article(s) of the trip. Take digital photos of lots of things, keep the captions straight. Research hotel prices, interesting things in the area (plagiarize directly from other travel guides, then verify, they often have intentionally misleading info), and keep a diary on some kind of mobile computing device. Make sure you have a website where you can try selling your articles in near-real-time, and if an editor wants a specific angle on a story, you can work it up while there. Start while you are still in school, to have a good base of editorial contacts.

Technical Trainer. For some products a company needs a trainer to follow up the sale with a few days or a week of on-site training. Good trainers are hard to find, good trainers with extensive technical background are very rare indeed. Only a few companies actually realise this and pay accordingly, but I know one who travels to cities all over the place and earns about 150k euros/year (30 weeks X 5,000 Euros). When he gets an assignment to a location he has never been before, he always adds a few days to his trip for traveling in the area. Needless to say, he is single.

Events Coordinator. Specifically, hi-tech events. There is a need to work alongside the other coordinators for things like internet access, power requirements, cabling, and speciality telecoms and satellite access. There is also a whole field around event security, providing the big burly guys with working radios, a command centre with computers and video surveillance, and other security related items. There has to be a hands-on techie to ensure smooth operation. Speaking multiple languages is also a key requirement, at least here in Europe.

There are lots of early career organisations, like the Peace Corps, or Ingenieurs Sans Frontiers, who will place you in a village somewhere for a year to earn some work experience. The only travel involved is in getting to the place, and back home after a year. But its a good way to see at least one other small part of the world. Take lots of language courses while you can, english only goes so far if you want to actually work in non-anglo parts of the world.

As others have pointed out, serious relationships and a travel career are mutually exclusive. Having children almost certainly means you need to settle down. So plan on having the travel career right after school, while you are still free enough to enjoy it, and expect to change into a cubicle job later.

the AC

Maybe these guys deserve attention, but not nearly as much as Engineers Without Borders. It may be considered trolling on Slashdot, but to most people it is obvious that there are more urgent problems for many of these countries/cities/villages than lack of Internet access.

For anyone who doesn't know "Engineers Without Borders provides people with technical skills the opportunity to help the developing world.". If your looking to do charity work check out their page at ewb

Try geek corps or Engineers without borders or if you're Canadian you can apply to Net Corps.

... the only problem is that ThinkCycle has been implemented already in a more effective manner: it's called volunteerism. No, it dosen't have fancy buzzwords like "distributed brainpower" or "open-source", but it has already proven it's success for centuries across many continents. People have been part of "distributed efforts" working on some of the world's larger problems by volunteering internationally, for the United Nations, or in their own communities. I have to say that Thinkcycle has their hearts in the right place, but good people with expertise have already thought of a more effective, old-fashioned implementation. Want global interconnectivity for using spare brain-cycles of professionals on far-away problems? Medecins Sans Frontières and Engineers Without Borders have been consulting like this for years with amazing technologies such as the 'telephone' and through 'mail' and even on the 'internet'

I saw this guy present this project a few months ago (as a presentation for Engineers Without Borders) and it is really important work.

One of the biggest problems in third world countries is that taking care of food and water is an all day task. There is no time for learning to read and write during the daylight hours. These lights allow people the opportunity to learn to read and write after the sun has set.

This is a very important task if we hope to help the people in remote areas. The target areas tend to be areas with no electricity, no running water, and very few fascilities at all.

And I have seen the LEDs that he uses light light up a mid-to-large size lecture theatre to the point that I could read a paper in fornt of me, 5 rows away from the source!

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Have a look at Engineers Without Borders. It's a nonprofit group, only recently started, whose purpose is to bring the technical skills of professionals in the developed world to help solve problems in developing countries.

EWB is growing quite fast, and it has already set up international placements in some Third World countries (India, Nepal, Chile). I'm sure they could use whatever support you can provide.

My school is part of an organization called Engineers Without Borders. http://www.ewb-isf.org/ I appears to be a Canadian organization, but if you are from the states they will at least be able to give you more information about what you are looking for.

Also check out Engineers Without Borders.